Nice analysis, JiK.

I had been thinking that the Dems were supporting the auto-industry bailout only on behalf of the huge and still-kinda-powerful UAW (and. by extension, on behalf of the huge numbers of workers employed by the Big Three and their suppliers and the many small businesspersons and their uion and non-untion employees who are dependent upon auto-company employees as their customers). In other words, viewing the companies primarily as employers.

Characterizing the car companies as worthwhile credit customers (not unlike individual human-being citizens) makes them a lot more sympathetic in my eyes, and should have the same effect on lots of other people, including Senators and Congressmen and their constituents. It ceratinly differentiates the automakers from the finance-industry creeps who don't make, and never had made, anything except deals.

I've been telling everyone my opinion that things are f**ed because most people can't buy stuff. I still think that my theory is basically true, albeit simplified to the point of abstraction. I like your formulation better, since it serves to better distinguish the current mess from the depression of the 1930s: the big problem that has developed nowadays is that most people can't borrow.