The Lehman-GM Connection

James Surowiecki makes the case for bailing out GM:

...one of the big reasons why bailing out the automakers feels necessary is precisely because we let Lehman Brothers fail. Had the financial system stayed reasonably stable, rather than plunging into the chaos we’ve seen in the past six weeks, then one might have been able to make the case that General Motors, with its three-billion-dollar market cap, was not all that important, in either literal or psychological terms, and that the market could easily weather its failure. Today, I think that sounds incredibly implausible to anyone who’s paying attention to the credit and equity markets.

But that's what they always say.