Adamant!

Yes; it seems pretty clear from yesterday's Congressional Hearings that the financial leaders of the Federal Gov't are pretty firm in their intention not to give any of your Hard-Earned-Tax-Dollars to any corporation that produces anything even remotely resembling a tangible asset. No, the TARP (don't ask)funds are to be given exclusively to financial institutions. Companies, that is, whose business is conducted entirely in the realm of symbolism (read: $$$). Their output is Spreadsheets; many, many, Spreadsheets. Tonnes and tonnes of Spreadsheets. These days mostly printed in Red Ink. Understandable, when you think about it. The financial leaders of the gov't are, after all, former mavens of the financial "Industry". They themselves have never produced anything beyond a Spreadsheet. To them, all business is conducted in the Realm of the Dollar-Denominated-Instrument. All their work is devoted to a symbolic (read: $$$) model of the to-be-avoided-at-any-cost Real World. To the Economist, real flesh-and-blood people get in the way of the nice elegant formulae used to describe the ebb and flow of Wealth Creation. A Payroll is a Spreadsheet showing symbolic (read: $$$) transactions. The idea that a payroll is made up of real people, requiring real food and real clothing seems terribly untidy.
No; I'm afraid we can't afford any money for GM or Ford. If they go broke it doesn't signify, as long as the Wall Street Financial Institutions can keep on producing Spreadsheets.
Makes me reconsider my own position that the Automakers shouldn't be bailed out. After decades of gov't. handouts for R&D, always spent on sufficiently futuristic technolgy as to make the actual Development part of R&D impractical. Creating a self-perpetuating government handout branch of the auto industry. Funging (is that a real word?) corporate profits to the Corporate Officers and the Stockholders. Like J. Wellington Wimpy, forever promising a technological breakthrough on Tuesday for a handout today. Now claiming that if the particular automakers GM, Ford, Chrysler go bankrupt, somehow no other company will make cars. All the factory capacity will sit idle. All the workers will be unemployed. We'll all have to walk!
Summing up: I'm entirely conflicted on this entire thing. Think I'll go take in a movie. Evade Reality. If it's good enough for Hank Paulson - it's good enough for me.