Let Them Eat Brake Pads

American automakers are running on empty and eyeing the government for a refueling: GM and Chrysler want taxpayers to back a merger between them to the tune of $10 billion, so that both companies can avoid bankruptcy. But as Steven Pearlstein writes in The Washington Post, bankruptcy reorganization is "the very process they need to get their costs and structure in line with market realities." In bankruptcy court, the automakers could bypass laws that make it difficult for them to pare back their bloated dealership networks and restructure employees pay and benefit packages to mirror those of nonunionized workers in foreign-company plants. "If the Treasury were to commit government funds without getting this kind of long-overdue restructuring," Pearlstein writes, "it would simply be throwing good money after bad."