The real issue obscured in the current media firestorm has been whether or not Detroit can develop — or perhaps more accurately, redevelop — a profitable business model for producing cars.  Although the bank and finance industries have received bailout payments that were by orders-of-magnitude higher than the loans extended to the automakers, the fact remains that we could give them the same amount of money as the banks and it still wouldn’t do anything to help keep the companies afloat if their business models are not fundamentally realigned.

That is going to mean seriously and comprehensively addressing the legacy costs/retirement benefits that were created in a wholly different historical era; the severe disadvantage in the provision of health-care in the United States versus our most direct competitors (Japan, Germany, Canada, and soon China & India); and brand dilution — Ford has done  a good job reducing it’s product line over the past few years, allowing it to both focus on creating a small group of effective and more cost-efficient vehicles and to accumulate cash, which has proved invaluable as the credit markets tightened.

Nothing that has happened recently has tamped down the continually growing blue collar v white collar,  Wall Street. v. Main Street / CEO v. Average Joe divides.  That said, he efforts of Michelle Bachman, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck & others to describe Obama’s efforts as “socialism”, “Mao Tse Tung”, and other assorted forms of scare-mongering is whipping up a ridiculous amount of frenzy without any sort of factual or theoretical support.