I'm not so sure. GM's stockholders and employees are being cast as the losers. Are they really?
GM employees have been getting a great salary, great job security (until now), with excellent health care and pension benefits (the latter guaranteed by the PBGC) for semi-skilled labor.
And GM stockholders also got a good deal. Even if (when) the stock price goes to zero, they'll have received dividends over a 45 period. Dividends seem small, but over a long period, reinvested, they've gigantic.
(dividends: http://is.gd/pXny )
And any investor who understood the consequences of this deal would have sold their stock in the late eighties.
When you look at it this way, GM is not so different from Bernie Madoff's pyramid game, with the U.S. taxpayers and bondholders left holding the bag.
The article basically argues that they didn't "cave" - instead they made a rational choice to write contracts that were detrimental to the long-term viability of the company in return for short-term margins and profits.
The same could be said for the legacy airlines. They made their contracts under regulation, where they could raise rates to match their labor costs without fear of competition, and now are suffering the consequences.
