With General Motors finally filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the many premonitions that economists had about the company’s future have been illuminated. And as we shade our eyes from the huge job losses in a sector the scale of which could bring a country to its knees, and the fact that much of this may have been prevented if tax-grabbing policies were curbed, it’s time to have a look at what the future may hold.

The US Government is stepping in to avoid what will be an enormous negative impact across the US, and is investing in a hopeful attempt to bring this giant back from the brink. General Motors is truly, an awesome icon in American society, and recreating something new from the ashes will not be easy.

There’s no keeping the Americans down, but they’ll need more than optimistic rhetoric to get them out of this situation. With 82.3 billion US dollars in assets facing up to 172.8 billion dollars in debt, the “fast track to a competitive future” seems a long way off.

And while the US Government gives another 30 billion dollars to the company to try, once and for all, to get it back on track, 21,000 union workers will be laid off. That’s in addition to 22 percent of executive, engineering and administrative staff, and 14 plants will close between now and autumn 2010 in states that already have some of the highest unemployment levels in the US.

The scale of this shutdown is one that will leave the US with long term scars and deep distrust about the country’s ability to fulfill the American dream, long since disappeared along with the 400,000 jobs lost in the auto industry until now.

For more details of Obama’s General Motors announcement, and the other side of the coin of Opel’s fate in Europe, see the New York Times. More reports from the Sydney Morning Herald.

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