In a high stakes game of chicken this past week, the Senate GOP and UAW leadership could not agree on setting a date certain for cutting members wages and the hard-line senators would not accept anything less. (See Auto 'support fund': Senate & UAW clash.)

One of the ironies of the proposed, and not passed, Federal bailout, or support fund, as I have begun to call it, depending on your point of view, is that the proposed $14 billion is more than the value Wall Street currently places on the two companies.

General Motors (NYSE: GM) closed Friday at $3.94, down $0.18 or 4.37%, with a capitalization of $2.4 billion. Ford (NYSE: F) closed at $3.04, up $0.14 or4.83%, with a capitalization of $7.04 billion. The combined value therefore is $9.44 billion; yes folks, another Washington bargain!

While world markets sank on the news of the failed talks, U.S. investors yawned and were unimpressed with activity in foreign markets -- all three of the major indices ended up for the day. Perhaps that's because temporarily propping up the two companies by spending more than they're worth made no sense to anyone outside Washington D.C. or Detroit.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture and planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of GM or Ford.

Although short selling -- the practice of selling borrowed shares with the hope of repaying the loan by buying back the shares at a lower price -- goes against the American belief that stocks always go up, I have long been fascinated with it. Short Stories discusses what works, what doesn't, and what some of the leading lights in shorting stocks think about its opportunities and threats. I describe possible short trades and I seek your comments and questions for story ideas. I don't offer any investment advice and I don't trade on any of the posts I write.

Last November, I analyzed Bally Total Fitness (NYSE: BFT) and concluded it was a good candidate for a short sale. With its announcement today that it may file for bankruptcy, that looks like a good bet. If you had shorted BFT at $2.53 on November 6th and closed your position at today's $0.67, your return would have been 278%.

Back then I was concerned that hedge fund giant Stevie Cohen, who had bought shares of the company, knew something I did not -- his fund, SAC Capital Advisors, owned 6.9% of BFT. I guess Stevie can afford to lose money on BFT which had $827 million in outstanding debt as of March 14, and said that it may need to reorganize its operations under Chapter 11 if it's unable to restructure that debt. BFT also noted that it won't be able to file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31 by today's deadline and it sees a loss from continuing operations for 2006.

I still don't know what Cohen saw in this investment but he still owns a 32,000 square foot mansion in Greenwich, CT -- and I don't.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Bally.

Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) has announced intentions to take on some serious financing today. The struggling auto maker says that it is seeking $18 billion to help fight against the effects of a possible recession and other "unanticipated events."

Ford is looking for financing in three different ways. The first part of the plan is a secured five-year revolving credit facility of about $8 billion. This will replace Ford's existing unsecured credit facilities of $6.3 billion. The company will also be looking for a senior secured term loan of around $7 billion. The third element consists of $3 billion in transactions which might include unsecured notes that would be convertible to Ford common stock in the future.

The ultimate aim of this current move is to add liquidity. Ford is expecting to have the deals finalized by the end of this year, resulting in $38 billion in liquidity. The senior secured credit facilities will be arranged by Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs Credit Partners L.P. and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.

With 2006 a poor year and 2007 being forecasted as even worse due to the housing market pulling down the overall market, Ford is working hard to avoid a possible bankruptcy. As Douglas McIntyre wrote earlier this morning, Ford is predicting that its market share will drop to around 14%. If the market as a whole continues to contract, the company is definitely looking at tough times ahead.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last 2 years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor'sObserver.