This has been boiling around in the trade papers for a while. Personnally the only thing that Chrysler has to offer GM is the Jeep nameplate and maybe some plant assets and foreign contracts. Many may have not noticed that during the financial market bailout wrangling just over a week ago a $25 billion loan authorization slipped through separately for "loan guarantees" to the US auto makers. With GM stock in the toilet because the market has no fundamental faith in the management team I wouldn't be surprised to see a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the assets sold off for a song and a new company emerge from the ashes. Kiss the UAW/pension/and other costly agreements goodbye. Of course the pension stuff is backed up by our tax dollars so punch the cash register again! The other alternative given the foolishness we're permitting, and based on polls we seem determined to make even worse, "the government" would step in to support it's union masters and "save" the company...............afterall "it's too big too fail".

GMAC got itself in a pickle when it bought Ditech, the mortgage lender. The probable partial reason this deal is holding is they want to see what kind of program will result from the BIG bailout deal so they can figure out how to play the game. Instead of just letting failures fail we turn to a socialist central committee model that only prolongs the agony and constrict the healing that would naturally occur in a free market. We've learned nothing from the lessons of the 1930s!