Wednesday, November 12, 2008  The Rubber Hits The Road  It will
be left to the Obama administration to sort out whether, or in
what way, the government might advance new billions to GM and
Ford. As Tom Friedman writes this morning, past failings of
management at these companies are well known: they failed to
support healthcare reform in the early 1990s, and they are now
choking on health management costs; much more important, they
decided to profit from SUVs, that is, from truck bodies and
cheap oil, and foul the atmosphere. The smug attitudes of GM
executives in particular--so I thought during my days editing at
the Harvard Business Review--gave you some idea of why the Reds
shot Kulaks.   Nevertheless, a couple of million jobs are at
stake, at least until other global auto makers can take over
some of this plant capacity. Should new public money believe in,
as Secretary Paulson put it this morning, the sustainability of
American car companies? I can see the macroeconomic arguments in
favor, and I don't need