The government bought Chrysler and GMAC a temporary reprieve — Chrysler got a $4 billion loan and GMAC became a bank holding company — but come March, when Detroit has to submit its new business plans to Congress, the debate about private equity's role in the automobile industry's debacle is likely to re-emerge.
The Irish government was forced to rescue the financial industry, and the whole debacle eventually led to a bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
The proposed acquisition of Arthur Andersen by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu could save thousands of jobs and soften the blow to the accounting industry of the Enron debacle.
And there was universal Republican support in Congress for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that produced this debacle.
"Global will have to sit back, lick their wounds and decide what is best for them, and what is the most cost-effective way for them to retrieve something from this debacle," says one industry source.
Don't get me wrong: having the president sign the bill into law will send the right message to the banking industry (important after the cramdown debacle) and offer added protection against a future Fed chairman arbitrarily rolling back the new rules.
The demise of Glass-Steagall did not come in one fell swoop, but when the Act was finally repealed in 1999, the stage was set for a massive deregulation of the financial services industry that led to the 2008 debacle.
The lead debacle stunned a toy industry already smarting from ongoing efforts to ban its use of phthalates, vinyl-softening chemicals added to rubber bath toys and teething rings, as well as to cosmetics and medical devices.
On the heels of several recent high-profile customer service debacles in the airline industry, it's clear that how you treat your customers can make or break your company and its reputation.
"Can they access enough biomass without people raising alarms about food?" The aviation industry appears to have learned from the debacles over ethanol, when government subsidies encouraged farmers to grow corn for fuel rather than food.
