I think that more than any other company, General Motors is America’s company. Coca Cola may be in more places around the world, but there is something about the brute force of a car and the company’s impact on the rest of the economy that lends strength to the identification.

So what does it mean when GM files for bankruptcy and has to be largely owned, at least in the short term, by the government? Is it just one company that messed up? Can we blame the union? Does it represent a decline in American power? Does it symbolize the transition to an information economy? Is there some other possibility that I missed?