[VRM]

Actually Mike,
The reason is much simpler than that.

A few decades ago GM sold 4 time as many cars as they sold last year. If they had continued to sell that many cars (with the same profit) they would not be in this mess.
The reasons for not selling as many cars are pretty simple also.
Poor design - blame designers, managers.
Poor quality - Blame workers, designers, managers.
Poor dealers - Blame dealers, managers for not enforcing sales standards and encouraging arrogance.
Overall competition - Blame everybody for letting Japan get the upper hand.

And I congratulate Japan for doing a great job of decimating their competition.

GM, however, decided that they could run their business as though they were still selling 40 million cars. Blame management for that. The unions thought they could still get the kinds of benefits from a company selling 40 million cars. Blame the unions, too.

It was a Ponzi scheme - and it would be fine as long as they were selling the right number of cars.

Steve