A World Without Fords

Last month, Congress approved $25 billion in loan guarantees for U.S. automakers, and the Big Three are already clamoring for more. Today, the Los Angeles Times asks if they're worth saving and, if not, what might be the price of their failures. "The reality is that Japanese and European automakers are already in the U.S. in a big way," says one expert. "They can more than make up the capacity lost by the closure of the Big Three." Others, however, "posit that the failure of just one of the Big Three would send shock waves through the entire manufacturing sector that could devastate suppliers and freeze up the other two carmakers. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost."