With Detroit’s auto-makers flat on their financial backs, GM, Ford and Chrysler are begging for at least $25bn in public subsidies. They hold 250,000 auto workers – and, implicitly, the US economy – hostage. The ransom note reads: send us the money or unemployment will soar, consumer markets will tank and millions will lose.

Congress ought not submit. The problem is not just the “blank cheque” that President-elect Barack Obama warns against. He is right to be wary about shoring up money-losing production lines with public funds. But the implicit solution – that conditioning the money transfers – is dubious. That would require expert knowledge as to what the car producers should be doing. But the government has precious little knowledge as to how to regulate financial institutions, which it decided to do via the Federal Reserve in 1914, let alone produce cars, which it has never done.