<Of course they didn't benefit the stockholders or bondholders of those institutions - including ones who owned what they thought were legally binding secured bonds - it was a payoff to the UAW.>

This is the problem with you Ilap. You don't care about the what you care only about the who. And as long as you don't care about the what, the Republicans can do whatever they want and blame the Dems, and the Dems can do whatever they want and blame Republicans. The end result is the kind of crap government we have now.

Does the UAW have the right to ask the government to lend auto companies money? No, that has to come from management with the board of director's approval.

There was stupidity everywhere you looked with the auto bailout fiasco... on both sides of the aisle.