First, the belief that the bailouts were a success rests on a central misunderstanding: the belief that GM and Chrysler would have collapsed had the government not intervened. Yet large corporations reorganize in bankruptcy routinely in the United States  and GM in particular is the prototype of the type of firm for which chapter 11 was designed: a firm with strong going-concern value, specialized labor and capital investments, but plagued with decades of bad management decisions and a need to fix crushing labor agreements, eliminate underperforming lines, and streamline an overgrown dealership network. Given the obvious viability of a leaner, more-efficient GM there is little doubt that it would have successfully reorganized. Moreover, to the extent that GM would have been unable to obtain post-bankruptcy operating loans, that would have been solely because of the credit crunch that began in 2008. And if so, then this would have made a possible case for use of TARP funds or the equivalent in order to finance or guarantee a narrowly-tailored bridge loan to overcome the temporary credit freeze-after all, to the extent that the TARP had any rationale at all it was to deal with the short-term liquidity problems in the banking industry that interfered with the ability to make even high-value loans, like a loan to GM would be.