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Robert Reich, economist and former Clinton administration labor secretary, doesn’t think much of General Motors expected bankruptcy filing today, as the nation’s largest automaker prepares for a de facto government rescue and takeover. If the United States really wanted to help GM, Reich wrote in an op/ed for the Financial Times, it would try a [...]

Specifically, Chapter 11. General Motors’ creditors have rejected the latest offer extended to them to facilitate an out-of-court restructuring — a swap of some $27 billion in GM debt for a 10 percent equity stake in the new, reorganized company. Creditors are complaining that union stakeholders were offered a much better deal than they were [...]

The Washington Post reports that the Detroit automaker is on its way to joining Chrysler in bankruptcy proceedings:
The Obama administration is preparing to send General Motors into bankruptcy as early as the end of next week under a plan that would give the automaker tens of billions of dollars more in public financing as the [...]

A proposed deal that would give Fiat a 35 percent stake in Chrysler in exchange for small car technology will depend on what new demands are placed on the struggling American automaker when the Obama administration’s auto task force announces its future bailout strategy on Monday. Automotive News reports:
The boards of Chrysler LLC and Fiat [...]

Another good point made by TWI’s Daphne Eviatar and Josh Marshall, who sums it up well. From TPM:
Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons — first is payback against a major industrial union; second is payback against states like Michigan and Ohio who have been moving away from the GOP; third is [...]

Saying the Democrats’ Detroit bailout plan “guarantees failure at taxpayer expense,” House Republicans on Wednesday introduced an alternative blueprint asking union workers to take a pay cut and give up benefits.
The current powers that be — both in Washington and Detroit — can’t be trusted to fix a problem they created, the Republicans say. From [...]

Nearly a month after the executives of the Big Three automakers arrived in Washington on corporate jets to ask Congress for a bailout, a group of auto workers made the same trip by carpool. Their mission was the same, but the blue-collar image they projected was strikingly different.

Last night, sixteen auto workers from Detroit packed into four cars (American-made, of course) and drove to Washington, where they met up with colleagues from four other states this morning to urge Congress to pass a bill to bailout the auto industry.
Speaking on Capitol Hill, active and retired union leaders voiced frustration that they were [...]

As congressional lawmakers debate whether America’s automakers deserve an emergency cash infusion, a central point of contention has been the relationship between the powerful autoworkers union and Detroit’s failed business model. In a sentence: Many Republicans argue that the platinum pension and health-care benefits enjoyed by workers have made the Big Three unable to compete [...]