Could the Obama administration gotten someone who actually knows about the automotive industry rather than a former reporter and private equity guy focused on communications? I'd even take someone who had experience in a manufacturing industry.

And why the hell is anyone listening to a private-equity partner on business sustainability? The whole point of private equity is to buy a company at firesale prices by borrowing a bunch of money, saddle the company with the very debt taken on by the private-equity firm to buy the company and then either a) sell off the capital and real assets, or b) convince some suckers that the latest reorg solves all the problems and get them to buy the company. "Long-term" in private-equity speak is anything more than two years (if that).

Hmm, the 3 guys tapped to deal with the industry are: a private-equity partner with zero experience in any manufacturing industry; a former head of the New York Federal Reserve who pushed Congress to put in a loophole to allow AIG bonuses, and has zero experience in any manufacturing industry; and a former Treasury Secretary who thought that repealing Glass-Steagal was a good idea, that derivative markets are run buy the best financial minds and won't take on undue risk, and has zero experience in any manufacturing industry.

Suprise - the industry these guys are familiar with get no strings attached because they understand how "difficult" it is to run an investment back or insurance firm, and an industry these guys aren't familar with has to have tons of strings attached because it's so "easy" to run any business besides an investment bank. (What I do is difficult, what everyone else does is easy.)

I hope that's the explanation for the different treatments that these two industries (although the term "industry" is a stretch for the financial sector since they don't actually produce anything of value). Otherwise, the Obama Administration is being run by supply-siders who think that the economy can be turned around by sprinkling money in on top and increasing the supply of capital will overcome continued decrease in demand due to a slowing economy.