GM and Chysler Bankruptcies

[Concillian]

I'm not sure what your point is.

Part of capitalism and markets is that your investment can fail and you can get screwed.

The point is that the laws have a very specific pecking order on who loses out most when a company goes bankrupt and those laws are being circumvented by the government.

We had a recent discussion on the government circumvention of laws with the torture thing, that circumvention of laws didn't work out very well. Think this one will? People choose investments based on the risk involved based on the laws that exist, circumvention of those laws means people will have less confidence in relatively low risk investments (bonds) and they will be a less viable option for companies who want to use them as an option in the future.

The ramifications here are quite a bit larger than most people realize, I think. It's the same sort of thing that got us into the whole mess with the sub-prime lending. Only a few percent of the people actually understand the issue and most people are like 'yeah, whatever, no big, it'll work itself out' Yeah... it worked itself out alright... right into >10% unemployment in my neck of the woods.