Throwing good money after bad

Chrysler says they will not pay the US back the money we loaned to keep them alive, instead ghiving us some equity in their company. Oh joy. I didn't mind the government propping up the auto companies and banks to prevent their collapse from taking the rest of the economy with it but when will enough be enough? Sooner or later we'll need to stop throwing good money after bad and let the market take care of the weaker links like it should.

Some of it is already happening as talent and high performers have started bailing out of the bigger financial firms or banks for smaller ones. Once that is well underway, perhaps then it will be time for the plug to be pulled on those larger firms and we should let the chips fall where they may (I just hope the US is high up on the secured creditor list). The auto makers are a bit trickier as they will take many other manufacturers and small businesses if they go down too fast. Sooner or later we'll have to decide if $7B is worth the price to keep Chrysler around or to tell Chrysler we're selling our equity for whatever we can get (which, if all goes well, might be more then $7B at the end of the day).