Let them die peacefully

The American auto companies, that is.  It sounds as if the Senate is being remarkably sensible in dealing with this ludicrous attempt to throw good money after bad.

See here for a nice article by Matthew Slaughter, a really good economist from Dartmouth, who points out that bailing out GM and Ford will have (gasp!) long-run ramifications.  Very quickly, if you keep bailing them out (and you'll have to, because that $25 billion is going right down the toilet in the space of a year to 18 months), then you basically are telling Honda and Toyota that they should look elsewhere to build their auto plants that compenstate their employees at about $60 per hour (benefits included).  Because there is no way we want to have more productive plants in the U.S. paying good wages.  That would suck.