The Wall Street Journal comes in with an excellent editorial about GM's fatal quality control issues and the auto bailout:
if Congressional investigators continue this inquiry they should also question federal traffic-safety employees and members of the White House automobile task force to see what they knew while running GM.
By the way, if the feds knew about this, why wasn't it disclosed to investors when the reborn GM sold shares to the public in 2010 or when the government sold the last of its shares in 2013? This would seem to be an issue for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which never tires of sanctioning companies that fail to disclose material facts. Does GM get a pass because it was Government Motors?...One of the reasons it's good to let companies fail is that consumers benefit as well-run companies replace poorly run firms. Consumers do not benefit when companies are kept alive to serve political goals.
Please see also the FutureOfCapitalism post What Did the Car Czar Know and When?, which raised this issue back on March 18.