I am not really sure. I think they would probably just use that up and then be back at the same spot. They need to stop paying thier CEO'S 20 million dollars a year. Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler and William Durant must be rolling in their graves. Although I am known mostly as a Ford guy, I would hate to live in a world where any of them would cease to exist. 

Whew, Detroit finally got a small LOAN from Washington!   That ought to keep things moving in the manufacturing sector for a while, but the US is not out of the woods yet.

The current venom that the Congress has been spewing at the UAW & the auto company management is baffling to me.  If the OEMs dump all of their pensioners, then those retirement checks will come from the Fed Pension Guarantee Board, which is almost busted right now.  The retirees also land in the already stressed Medicare/Medicaid systems.   Currently, GM alone pays out over $5BILLION per year & that cost would get tossed in the lap of the US taxpayers.

IMHO, the real reasons that the entire US manufactiring sector is in trouble is fairly easy to understand, but has little to do with Chrysler, Ford, or GM mgmt, but a lot to do with Washington:

1) $4.00 per gallon gas changed consumer buying habits overnight.  If gas stayed @ $2.00, the US auto companies would have been "printing money" with their current fleet of cars & trucks.  How many folks would have bought the new V-8 Mustang, Challenger, or SUV instead of that cramped little POS econo-box they have now??  The OEMs simply cannot shift product in a few months, but that's what Congress expected.  Congress was of no help & got no remedy for the country, when they subpeonaed Big Oil last year.

2)  For decades, the "Fools on the Hill" have steadfastly refused to regulate the banking system & look what happened.  Those greedy bankers grenaded the banking system, we BAILED THEM OUT,  & now we can't get them to restart loans to consumers.  If it requires a 700 credit score to buy a new car, our economy will languish for quite a while.

3)  Costs & complexity of EPA, NHTSA, & other Federal regulations have escalated every year that just adds cost to the window sticker.  The Gov't often requires stupid things, like the new edict to make ALL power windows have an anti-pinch sensor in them (for 09), so that will add $60-$120 to the price of a car for that technology   Or despite this being the age of super-computers, in order to achieve a Gov't approval for a new car design it still requires that 22 vehicles be crash tested (prototype cars can cost upwards of $400K each).  We can't forget to include the new push for electronic stability control that is gaining momentum.  The list is staggering & endless.

4)  Tax law loopholes for offshoring our manufacturing base to China.  They dump cheap s**t here without any import duties & we cannot do the same there.  Chinese law requires that EVERYTHING sold in that country meet their domestic content requirements (ie 85%-92% in automobiles).  The global playing field is still not level.The USA is the ONLY country that unconditionally embraces Free Trade to our own detriment.  Many of our trading partners don't & add cost penalties to our products to prevent them from being competitive in those overseas markets.  Congress needs to require that their goods get treated in the same manner here.

You're right we can't fix stupid, we need to vote them out of office!

I agree with Dan. The government should not be in teh business of bailing anybody out. Next thing that will happen is that we (the taxpayers) will have to bail the government out again in the form of higher taxes!