Every kind of expenditure that could be postponed was cut back. For America’s long-ailing motor vehicle industry it was the coup de grâce. Car and light vehicle sales plunged from an annual rate of 16 million units in 2007 to as few as 9 million per annum in 2009. By December 2008 it was clear that both Chrysler and General Motors would fail. In the early twenty-first century GM was no longer the national totem that it had once been. Its total worldwide employment in 2007 was 266,000, compared with a peak of 853,000 in 1979.
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