The Auto Industry: What went wrong?

By Ken Silverstein

From Barry Lynn, a regular Harper’s contributor, at the Detroit Free Press:

Viewed over the long haul, the all but complete bankrupting of the Big Three is a stunning event. Not long ago the American auto industry was the greatest manufacturing complex in the world. Had a competitor nation consciously intended to destroy this system the result today would surely count as one of history’s great coups. Yet no strategist in Tokyo, Brussels or Beijing cooked up this blitzing of Detroit. Rather it was the product of a set of incoherent policies made right here in America.