Nobody in my family works in the auto industry currently, but I can guarantee that if the white house had allowed the big 3 to collapse, that you ALL would be feeling it. Without getting into UAW politics (which I dont know anything about, and I'm pretty sure most of you are just going off of media bias, same as the public hears shit about whats going on in the middle east and believe it without second thought), but 1 in 5 jobs nationwide are related to the autos somehow. If any one of them were to collapse, it would be a blow to the other 2, and EVERYTHING relating to the industry would fall apart.
Nobody can keep track of the $700B that the banks had, while their CEOs still fly in their jets as previously mentioned, but the autos asked for a small fraction of that and everything is blowing their tops.
Detroit is unique in that it ONLY has the autos. If they fail, the state fails, the region fails, the country fails. I sure as hell don't want to come home to Detroit worse off than it already is.
My $0.02