The automakers are in the midst of their begathon appeal to Congress and the president. While political talk show hosts have been all over this story, Clark wants to discuss it from an economic perspective.

GM sales are down some 40%, Chrysler is down some 50% and Ford is down around 30%. The American people have spoken -- day after day, purchase after purchase -- and said they don't want the products the Big 3 are making.

This is not, however, a diatribe about the American worker. It's really general management that has failed. Case in point: There was a GM plant in Fremont, California, that was just about the worst plant since the days of the Yugo. Toyota took the plant over; hired back the exact same workers who were employed there under GM; and it went from worst to first within 2 years. Again, there's nothing wrong with the American worker; it's management that's at fault.

Now we have the Big 3 coming to us and begging to get them out of their management failures. GM says it could fail in a matter of weeks. They're trying to create a sudden sense of urgency.

Capitalism allows you to file for bankruptcy, reorganize in Chapter 11 and try to make a go of it again. That's how the system should work. It should not entail us being told to empty our wallets because the Big 3 didn't make cars that we wanted to buy.

In capitalism, if a business is allowed to fail, the marketplace allows other more efficient businesses to survive. We pervert the system by bailing out manufacturers who have inefficiencies. Of course, the Big 3 will cloak themselves in the American flag during their begathon, but what they're really looking to do is put capitalism in a straightjacket.