The missing link here is that all foreign governments prop up their car businesses, and developing ones are working like heck to create such an industry. They understand that the process of developing cars (not building them) drives a huge center of competence in all kinds of manufacturing specialities.

I'm in a non-automotive heavy industry in Detroit and I can call on hundreds of companies with huge expertise in thousands of subjects here locally because they support the big three. Lose the big three and those companies all go.

Sure, lose the big three and Toyota will still build them in Alabama or Tennesee or whatever. But the expertise will be gone forever.

When this bailout fails, in a few decades the US will be eclipsed permanently in manufacturing by China, India and the E.U. (if they can hang on). We will look back at losing our ability to develop this stuff (and all the other heavy industry we have been happy to shed) as our long decline. We cannot be rich by all becoming expert baristas at Starbucks. We need to know how to create real things.