Barbara Crosette hit it right on the head with her piece for The Nation.

Hard times for American car companies and other manufacturers are not a recent development; they were a long time in coming. It wasn’t because American cars were shoddy products doomed to self-destruct. Ask the Cubans about that. And in Vietnam, for years after the end of the “American” war, Jeeps and vintage vans stayed alive and reliable with the help of local ingenuity.

Instead, the last half of the American automotive century is a story of missed opportunities, narrow vision and an arrogant assumption among automakers, backed by supportive US government spending on highways, that they knew best what American drivers wanted, and the rest of the world might as well get used to wanting that, too.

Yes, wages of American auto workers were high, but that was not the only, or perhaps even the underlying, problem. Skilled workers could just as well have been making smaller, cheaper cars for export as the bigger, tougher models that would suck up gas on American roads. Automakers may now be manufacturing offshore in Brazil or China, but that is not the same as selling an American-made product abroad built by American workers.

Japanese automakers are now also feeling the squeeze of a global recession. Ironically, they too may have put too much faith in the American market. But they will adapt.

Meanwhile, we haven’t heard much from Detroit about global strategies as automakers struggle to survive. Chances are that when there is a turnaround in the automotive industry, carmakers in Asia and Europe will already be a step ahead. They know they have to know what sells across borders.

They are truly pathetic and actually very dangerous people.

This has got to the most depressing thing I’ve seen today anywhere. I happened to see this on The Nation website and got to learn more about the American News Project as well. It’s good to see something like the ANP happening and they are in the area on 17th Street NW DC .