Beggars cannot be choosers – they are asking the taxpayers to bail them out – and the taxpayers need some assurances that they WILL restructure. I’m totally fed up with this “give us billions and we’ll just keep on doing what we’ve been doing (that led to failure) and don’t you dare ask us to change anything – especially our multi-million salary packages. Oh by the way, if you can just take over all those pension plans and get that @#%&* union off our backs that would be just peachy”.

Grrrrr!

In a prepackaged bankruptcy, an automaker would go into court with financing in hand after reaching agreement with lenders, workers and suppliers on what each would give up and on the business plan to be followed. The process might take six to 12 months, compared with two to five years if the automakers followed an ordinary Chapter 11 proceeding and worked out agreements under a judge’s supervision, Bane said.

Automakers would have to depend on government financing to restructure in bankruptcy court and probably couldn’t attract private loans until they were ready to emerge from the process, Bane said.

Officials of the three automakers told members of Congress this week that they had studied a pre-arranged bankruptcy, championed by Republican lawmakers such as Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, before dismissing the idea as unworkable.

“We have looked at all aspects, whether it’s a prepackage, whether it’s prenegotiated,” Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli told a Senate committee on Nov. 18. The options are all “more negative” than restructuring as a condition of receiving federal aid, he said.

Prepacks Rejected

Wagoner and Alan Mulally, CEO of Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, also said under congressional questioning that their companies had studied and rejected the idea of reorganizing under court protection.”