Lame duck bails out carmakers

President Bush, the lame duck who Barney Frank criticized as being AWOL, bailed out GM, Chrysler, the UAW, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats generally when he agreed to lend $17.4 billion to GM and Chrysler from the TARP. Whether he prevented economic Armageddon remains to be seen.

Truth be told, the $17.4 billion is probably a sunk cost, never to be recovered. It's the price of a three-month postponement. Unless the carmakers get concessions from the UAW they cannot survive. They will not get adequate concessions until a bankruptcy court orders them. Even then, there's no assurance that they can survive without new management at GM.

That's how it looks from here.