>GM's problems were of their own making and not comparable.
>
>GM could not or did not change when it needed to. As Deming once said, "You don't have to change. Survival is optional."

GM made a number of changes over the years. Those changes helped in their demise.

>Enacting bad ideas for the sake of change is not helpful and in many cases will cause more harm.
>
>Yes, but it wasn't done for the sake of change. It was done because US firms were losing out to immensely profitable others. The arguments were compelling and the risk to the taxpayer was calculated to be small. It looked like a good idea at the time. Quarterbacking from our comfortable armchairs after the event is easy enough and I can imagine the complaints had the US sector been decimated by foreign banks and local entities who could avoid G/S. The banks would have screamed, the shareholders would have screamed, the habitual government-bashers would have screamed.

You're undoubtedly right about the screaming, however, the system wouldn't have imploded here and us armchair quarterbacks could've pointed to the rest of the world's implosion and been justified. Of course without housing inflation we may not have even had this crisis. It really was a perfect storm of government interference, de-regulation, poor rate management and greed.