Let Market Forces Work --

Why did American car companies come out of the doldrums of the 1970s and finally begin to offer a quality product sometime in the nineties? Because European and (especially) Japanese car makers had outpaced them and were producing a higher-quality, more efficient car for less money. In short, they did business properly and had a superior product. GM, Ford, and Chrysler didn't go under -- though Chrysler was owned by Daimler for a while -- they retooled and began offering a better product that could actually compete for the consumer's dollar.

One of the major reasons we're even in this mess is because there has been an expectation that the government would do something lest these companies fail -- indeed, the government had been encouraging a lot of the practices that led us to where we are today.

It seems almost that since the government has screwed things up this badly so far the only way out is to take a little more of that poison (like having gin to get over a hangover), while had the government just stayed out of it for the most part (starting back in the '30s with Glass-Steagall) the problems wouldn't be what they are today... Overregulation was the overreaction to the Great Depression; once some of that overregulation is relaxed it allows some companies to act irresponsibly. But the solution isn't going back to overregulation, it's to allow the market finally to do what it does.