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About 29 years ago -- in August 1979 -- Chrysler was at death's door. It made gas guzzlers that nobody wanted to buy and it asked for $1 billion to keep itself going until a fleet of more fuel efficient cars could take up the sales slack. If it failed, a Congressional Budget Office study said that 360,000 jobs would be lost.
The U.S. turned down Chrysler's request and offered loan guarantees to encourage banks to make Chrysler the loans it needed to cover its $100 million a month operating expenses until the new car line could hit the dealer floors. That story had a happy ending -- and offers some lessons for the current situation.
Except for the much smaller numbers this story sounds much like the plight of General Motors (NYSE: GM) . As I posted, GM is trying to convince the Congress that it will fail without a $25 billion bailout and that such a failure would cost 2.5 million jobs and $125 billion in lost economic activity. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will come through with the money that GM wants.
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