Should the US bailout the big three automakers?

[What'saCobra?]

THX, but:
i only wish that more folks today would understand my principal point:
it is excess regulation via unnecessary, wrong-headed and economically impossible "rule making" that causes industry to fail, not avaricious marketing departments, sleazy salesmen or failed engineering challenges.

There is only ONE rule-making entity for aviation, the FAA. Admittedly, it is, like most of government, slow to change, but not frozen. Efficiency is NOT mandated. Safety in design, manufacturing and operations is mandated, by that one entity. Satisfy them and you are in the door. AND, since the rest of the known universe uses FAA rule-making and procedures as the basis for their own aviation industry (even the Russians!), you become globally competitive at the git-go (well, nearly).

In banking, it was the forced mortgage-writing for NINJA borrowers (No Income, No Job, no Assets) with "easy" terms and scant qualifications that created the rot at the core of current banking (note: not yet solved with TARP, which was used to cannibalize smaller banks BY DIRECT CONGRESSIONAL DEMANDS via law). The problem was not lack of regulatory control, but excessive and non-economic rule-making, with threats from Reno's DoJ (and the Gorelick-encouraged stone-walling of the Bush administration's demand for improved audits and improved administrative rules by the dem House under little Tommy Dashle and Nancy "i-can't-feel-my-face" Pelosi).

It is important to recognize the significant difference between excessive regulatory interference via Law and Rule-making versus the simultaneous lack of proper administrative internal controls of FNMA and other Fed Regulatory Agencies and the subsequent big-mouthed, race-baited and turf-defended illicit defense of the indefensible loaning failures. Most folks do not yet fully comprehend the exact nature of these failures nor the frequent attempts by McCain and Bush to correct them. FNMA etc were not administered by the executive branch. They are, like the Postal Service, quantos of a sort, but after-the-fact, guaranteed by the taxpayer, despite Congressional assurances that those would NEVER be the case.

re: Autos
We certainly have the capacity to mfg and sell world-class automobiles and we do so every day, but not very much of the US fleet is exported because it is not designed to world-market standards and regulatory requirements. More later, got to go.