Seeing in the Economist these firms seeking billions in aid recalls a comment years ago by Tom Peters re their long, slow demise. They were not killed by overwhelming force of much stronger rivals – they were ‘nibbled to death’ – by Germans in high-performance saloons, by Japanese in compacts, then SUVs, and now in hybrids. What puzzles me in all this is that they had access to what they needed to win these smaller battles. These same ...