Work With Competitors to Survive: A Lesson From GM

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Want to guess what the stock market will do next week? Good luck. With turbulence the new status quo, there's only one economic prediction I'm willing to make with reasonable certainty: 2008 will end go down as a miserable year for U.S. automakers.

The auto industry was already at the bottom of a very steep downswing, thanks in part to the summer's record-high gas prices. Then came the global financial system's near-total meltdown, and it looked like the big car companies were headed for life support.

Not long after General Motors' (GM Quote) stock hit a stomach-churning 53-year low, we began hearing whispers about talks between GM and Chrysler, currently owned by private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. News that the Big Three might become the Big Two could be taken as yet another sign that the U.S. economy is in serious trouble. ...