Rule of thumb from my consulting days: Any financial/economic forecast exceeding 18-24 months is at least 50% subject to be completely invalidated by unforeseen external factors. IOW, your assumptions may be good as gold NOW, but the world is at least even money to make them worthless inside of two years.

EX: GM could start pumping out lousy and expensive small cars that no one really wants, but if the government mandates that only lousy and expensive small cars may be sold, GM could prosper. But the smart money isn’t likely to take the bet.

Much as I hate to say it, Riech’s analysis seems sound for now. He elaves out that the deal is also designed to transfer chunks of the money running through GM (including taxpayer funding) to favored constituencies in the meantime, which is to the admin a feature and not a bug. To the taxpayer, not so much.

Let’s re-hire some of the experienced old hands who ran the company into a ditch in the first place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese.html?_r=1&ref=politics

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

If this does work it’s a nightmare for conservatives. It will mean the end of their quasi-religious belief in the wonder of the marketplace as opposed to the utter incompetence of government. It might cause people to wonder whether there are times when we can turn to government and expect intelligent action.