One of the coldest quips of this long winter is the one where a casual friend or total stranger asks out loud, in exasperation, "Where's my bailout?" Up 'til now, all the bailout money has gone to "Wall St. billionaires," and other irresponsible characters — for which they were obliged to show up in Washington in order to be bullied and berated by Congressmen (who you can be sure are very well informed on all the relevant details.)

At least the bankers got their hands on the money first; the automaking execs were humiliated that way before they got anything. They're due for another round of "hearings" in March, and you can expect more staged outrage.

Which ought to be a signal to the auto parts manufacturers, but apparently they can't help themselves. If there's free money available, someone is going to take it, and that means everyone will take it. And everyone will take the hit, because the money is not free.

With a few obvious exceptions, these are companies that generally don't need to clear up "toxic" debts, don't need to restructure or to reposition themselves, and don't need to cut out excess capacity: they just need for consumer demand to revive so that their customers can get back to placing orders. They've spent the past 20 years right-sizing and optimizing. Some fresh cash will help keep the lights on, but it's not going to fix their biggest problem.

And once they do take the money, they'll have a whole new set of problems but they still won't have anyone buying their products.