In the same issue of the Weekly Standard , Matthew Continetti analyzes the “bailout state.” The point of government management of the auto, banking, and other industries is not merely to save jobs (and votes) and support organized labor. More, in the bailout state, the government can “transform once-private companies into tools of economic and social policy.”

Government Sponsored Enterprises lend to people without good credit; banks lend to consumers so they can spend and keep the economy running; taking over GM is the only way “to eliminate gas guzzlers from the domestic fleet” and thus make “both the labor and environmental lobbies happy.”