Well, GM is circling the drain, as it has for months (years really), and none of this should come as a surprise. Bush and then Obama both poured billions into the automakers to stave off this very moment, and Obama pushed the envelope in that the government is now dictating the terms and trying to pick a winner out of all this.

The problem is that the market loses. Taxpayers lose. Unions win. Lawyers win.

In fact, it’s the lawyers who win by a long margin. There will be the inevitable shareholder and creditor suits as Obama and his Administration throw out years of precedence with junior creditors taking before senior creditors (throwing existing law on its head). Throw in the dealerships suddenly out of business, the bankruptcy of real estate companies and other related businesses suddenly holding dealer properties without income coming in, advertising companies and newspapers/Internet without ad sales from dealers, and things take on a new dimension of bad.

In fact, I suspect that this is lawyers all the way down …