GM’s less-than-wildly-popular cars are just the tip of the iceberg, as the excellent Wall Street Journal article by Michael E. Levine explains (“Why Bankruptcy Is the Best Option for GM?”).

There are many repercussions to both bailing out GM and forcing it into bankruptcy.

The hazard of a bailout is obvious to me. As the taxpayers, we’d be feeding a failing monster at the tune of $25-to-$50 billion a pop. The bottom line is, GM’s recently well-documented record of making better and better cars has still not made a dent in its sagging market reputation.

Although I believe GM is making much better cars today, I’m afraid in this competitive environment there aren’t enough buyers to drop a new Mercedes Benz, BMW, Acura or Lexus in favor of a Cadillac or a Buick.

The main weakness of GM, which still continues to pump out Hummers and Suburbans, is that there are not enough consumers who want to buy its vehicles. No bailout money can change that fact in the short run.

However, shutting down GM might also invite another kind of disaster.

GM has 7,000 dealers (compared to only 1,000 for Honda and 1,500 for Toyota). If we assume that every dealer feeds at least 50 employees (including sales people), that adds to 350,000 paycheck earners. If GM goes bankrupt, the ranks of the unemployed goes up by yet another 350,000 households!

And this is just the dealership personnel… Add to this all the UAW workers employed by GM factories and GM suppliers, and the impact of such a bankruptcy on the unemployment figures will become evident.

Moreover, the issue is not limited to the currently-working either. GM currently signs the retirement checks of tens of thousands of retirees. Due to its contractual obligations, GM is also committed to paying nearly “full wages and benefits” to all the GM workers who lose their jobs due to automation or plant closure.

Here are some other burdens listed by Michael Levine:

“GM owns or leases enormous amounts of property for facilities it's not using and probably will never use again, and is obliged to support revenue bonds for municipalities that issued them to build these facilities. It has other contractual obligations such as health coverage for union retirees. Moreover, GM supports myriad suppliers and supports a huge infrastructure of firms and localities that depend on it. Many of them have contractual claims; they all have moral claims.”

That’s why I think a strictly-controlled restructuring, rather than an outright bankruptcy and closure, would be the more appropriate option for GM, its current workers, and retirees. And since its current management is directly responsible for the sorry shape GM is in today, I hope no deals will be cut to reward its high-flying top executives any further.

Actually, how about paying all GM executives just what an average assembly line worker is making these days until the company is back in black again?

That’s the day when I might perhaps honestly consider trying out a Buick, as a salute to the fine memory of a sweet Olds 88 that I used to drive once upon a time.