We all saw this coming years ago, but most of us looked the other way because we are a live-in-the-present society. I saw it 6 years ago and bought a Prius. Now I say "good riddance" to an economic dinosaur. I have fond memories of riding in the back seat of my dad's impeccably kept '58 Buick Special and then '62 Cadillac, but I'll have much fonder memories of driving my fun, gas-sipping Prius.

GENERAL MELTDOWN By PAUL THARP July 3, 2008 -- Bloated by years of gas-guzzler greed, General Motors has collapsed almost overnight from a driving force into a virtually broke loser facing bankruptcy. GM shares skidded yesterday into the single digits, a 54-year low, banishing the one-time No. 1 automaker towards the bottom ranks of America's corporate pecking order. Shares tumbled 15 percent to $9.98, with 75 percent of their value already wiped out in the past year. Even towel purveyor Bed Bath & Beyond and motorcycle-maker Harley-Davidson now enjoy richer market values than GM. "It's become a single-digit midget," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro-Pacific Capital. "It's now 1/25 the size of Toyota's market value. The question now is who will go into bankruptcy first, GM or Ford?" More Wall Street analysts piled onto GM's woes yesterday with Merrill Lynch declaring one of the grimmest outlooks yet. It said GM needs to raise as much as $15 billion in coming months to avoid parking the cash-strapped company in bankruptcy court. "Bankruptcy is not impossible if the market continues to deteriorate, said Merrill analyst John Murphy. He downgraded the anemic stock from a "buy" to "underperform" - projecting it would hit $7 a share. GM's problems began more than a decade ago, analysts say, when it couldn't beat back Japan's popular economical cars, and threw its might into making highly profitable gas hogs - pickups and SUVs. For years, the plan worked and earned record profits for GM while gas was under $2 a gallon. But the plan got totaled when gas soared over $3 a gallon just as debt-laden consumers began avoiding showrooms. "GM got itself into its mess," said Schiff. GM's finance arm, GMAC, made matters worse by loaning too much money to customers to buy its vehicles. GM dug its own hole by giving 6- and 7-year loans to people to buy cars they couldn't afford. The loans even exceed the warranties," said Schiff, adding that borrowers are defaulting at record levels on financed cars. "The US car market is dead. It makes cars no one wants to buy, and people are too broke to pay for them if it they do buy," said Schiff. Analysts say bankruptcy could be helpful to GM's future. In bankruptcy, GM would be able to eliminate common stock obligations, and seek to seriously alter its expensive labor agreements. "I don't see any investors stepping up to the plate right now to buy into GM. I think they'll wait to buy assets out of bankruptcy court," said Schiff. GM's other option is to sell more shares to raise new capital, seriously diluting its already widely held stock. The automaker has "sufficient liquidity and financial flexibility to meet its 2008 funding requirements," said GM spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem in an e-mail. The company may consider "reducing structural costs, selling non-core assets, and retiming or eliminating other capital spending," she said.