But we still need to save them.

Another difference between this and other large bankruptcy cases is the potential collateral damage. New York will survive the failure of Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns, although it will feel the pain of lower tax revenues and retail sales. When a national retailer goes down, it hurts landlords all over the place but rarely causes an entire mall to become vacant. But already depressed Michigan, and several adjacent states, will have a much more difficult time dealing with the collapse of an automaker. This doomsday economic scenario, released by the Center for Automotive Research, says that up to 3 million jobs nationwide could be lost if the Big Three stop all production next year. That might not be in the offing. But the impact on Michigan's cities, towns, state government, housing values, and public institutions (including resources that the state has built that are national resources, such as its public university system) would suffer grievous harm.

There's a general consensus that in order to survive, the Big Three need to shrink their capacity by 40 percent, recruit new managers and corporate boards, restructure labor relations in such a way that they can have lower-cost and more flexible work forces, and shuck many of the liabilities they willingly entered into, all while raising vast new sums of capital to invest in research, development, and factory modernization.

But is a Chapter 11 filing the best way to reach these goals? Answering yes presumes that the case would be resolved quickly, that the entities would be able to obtain ample debtor-in-possession financing, that parties with legitimate legal claims on the company's assets and cash flows would give them up willingly. But many of the questions surrounding the Big Three's future can't be resolved in law firm conference rooms or in the chambers of bankruptcy court, and won't center around legal questions. The failure of the American automotive industry—and let's be honest, it has basically failed—is a matter of public policy. If the Big Three can be saved, they can be saved only by government.

Photograph of cars by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images; cars on Slate's home page by Larry W. Smith/Getty Images.