Well, it’s official people: we have a new president. And, as the new president, Barack Obama is working hard, making sure that we all know just how much trouble we’re in. Now, I’m not knocking on the guy – but it seems to me like there’s a lot on his plate right now, and I don’t know if the automobile industry is too high on his list of things to take care of. Between the war in Iraq (something that no one has heard too much of recently), the failing economy, and the eventual destruction of all mankind (wait…back up), Barack Obama is going to be hard pressed to find time to manage it all.

But that’s not to say he can’t. Rather, it’s going to take time, money, energy, and vast resources to get the economy back on track, and it’ll most likely take years before we’re able to safely heave a sigh of relief and laugh about what happened “all those years ago,” but when we’re back on our feet it’ll be because Barack Obama had the foresight to take things to the next level and make sure his country had the willpower and the ability to get through its darkest moments.

But will it be him?

The question posed before everyone, now that he’s in office, is: “can Barack Obama fix it?” Can he do what he has pledged to do – heal a divided nation, stop the wars in the Middle East, fix the economy – in the four years that he’s here? Or will it be someone else that comes to the rescue?

Regardless of who it is or what they do, one fact remains: the American auto industry cannot fail. GM employs hundreds of thousands of people, and if their factories were to shut down for good, bad things would happen to good people, and that’s something that we can’t have. But this whole “fixing the Big Three” idea is a two-way street; we can’t have the government supporting a failing industry that doesn’t want to change, and we can’t have a company who isn’t willing to grow be the staple of the entire Midwestern and Northern economy (for the most part, anyway). It’s bad business.

Capitalism works well, and with the rise and fall of industries comes new faces to the workforce, new businesses on Sak’s 5th Avenue, and the overall change of pace that comes with new companies. But there are some companies that, should they collapse in this free market economy that we’re riding, will tear the very fabric of it apart, and one of those companies (well, three) is the Big Three.