The big three respond too slow to changing market conditions. e.g. the price of gas goes up up up starting in about 2005, and they take an absolute pounding in the SUV side of the business. Now gas is low, and in a recession, sales of big ticket items like cars are the first to fall. IMO this responsiveness needs to improve.

Also, consumers are not that reponsive. They switch to Japanese cars like Toyota for reliability and fuel economy, they find that Toyota makes decent cars, and guess what, lots of those customers don't come back to the big three, even when the big three do make improvements to be more competitive with Japanese makes.

In principle I tend to think the private sector should solve their own problems, but now the stakes are so high, I really don't think there's any advantage at all in letting the big three fail. There should be a better answer.