The Democrats are now going to run the American auto industry, and they've got a foolproof plan to restore GM's profits: GM should stop making so many big, high-profit vehicles and start making more small, low-profit vehicles. They're going to lose money on each little car but make up for it on volume! You can see now why investors could never come up with such an idea. It just took a business genius like Barack Obama, with his extensive experience at making a profit in so many private industries, to make the auto industry come to its senses.

By the way, Obama, personally, bought a 4,000 pound Chrysler 300 land yacht when he got rich—his family's safety is a high priority to him—but who's checking?

Seriously, why does anybody think that even after GM spent years of government-mandated retooling to make small cars that it would even then be competitive with Toyota and Honda at making small, well-engineered cars? It's not like Toyota and Honda are going to be getting worse over the intervening years. I don't understand how that would work without slipping dumb pills to Toyota's and Honda's engineers. The only policy that would make sense would be a high tarriff on the car parts that are imported from Japan (transmissions?).

The fundamental problem of the incoming Obama Administration is that their thinking is based on the very 2007 assumption that the fundamental problem of scarcity was solved so now all we have to do is redistribute wealth and reorganize society in a more SWPL fashion. Instead, it turns out the Bush Boom was a Bush Bubble and we actually have much bigger problems than the conventional wisdom of 2007 assumed.