Steven Rattner...

...on the auto bailout (my emphasis):

Companies do fail all the time and in a normal economic and financial environment there is a mechanism for dealing with failing companies. They go through a bankruptcy process so there is private capital available to finance them in bankruptcy, called DIP financing, and then they eventually emerge restructured. In some cases they get liquidated if they’re simply, not viable, but most major companies that go through bankruptcy emerge and continue to function.

But late 2008 and early 2009, private capital markets were frozen, so there was no private capital available to finance GM in a bankruptcy. And without DIP financing, GM would have simply run out of money, closed its doors, and filed a bankruptcy petition that quickly turned into a liquidation. It would have put out of work all of its people, all of its dealers and employees—or most of them—along with many of its supplier jobs. It would have rippled through the auto sector and it’s quite possible, if not likely, that Ford and Chrysler would have been forced to shut down, too, because of the supplier problems. So this was an extraordinary problem, of a magnitude that I’ve never seen in my lifetime. I think it was appropriate for the government to step in.