Growing up in southeastern Michigan, it seemed normal to see large manufacturing plants every few miles.  One has to drive miles around them, over well-used rail crossings, along with regular heavy truck traffic.  To a young person it just seems like how the whole world is put together.  Personally, I was lucky to be on the fringes of Ann Arbor, with ready access to forests and swamps and open fields with bounding foxes, but when we went anywhere toward the big metro grid, there were the big Ford and GM signs.  But still, if we went farther out in the country, the GM and Chrysler proving grounds took up big patches of farm land.



Getting a little older, and despite efforts to the contrary, I wound up working in the auto biz.  For a short time I worked directly for GM, in Henry Ford's famous old Willow Run B-24 bomber plant.



A couple careers after that, I still keep an eye on the auto biz, and even did well playing on stock volatility in my (tiny) IRA this year.  This morning I'm checking the online headlines and I look to the sidebar where stock quotes come up.  Something looked different - and it really drove home what has just happened.



No such symbol.... one of the DOW components just VANISHED!  Good morning, fellow GM investor. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090602/ts_nm/us_gm_37