To get back to the demise of the auto industry for a moment....
I would submit that government interference was at least partially to blame for that. Back in 69-70 America was making the best cars on the planet, Boss Mustangs, Z28 etc, it was all good. Then in 1971 Congress passed the first part of the Clean air act, in itself a good idea, it never took design lead time or technology into consideration. The second part of the CA act was when convertors were introduced about 1975. While this was going on Congress also passed new automotive safety parameters, like 5 mph bumpers and a bunch of other stuff, once again, never allowing any design or technology lead time.
The end result was that Detroit had to rely on a bunch of ill sorted, stop gap measures to get the cars pass the clean air act, added to this was the weigth penalties of the new crash standards. The American car became an overweight gas hog over night, it's dependabiltiy had vanished.
Along comes OPEC in 1972-3 that cut off the oil supply, and put the finishing nails into Detroit's coffin, this kicked the door open for fuel efficient well engineered dependable import cars and Detroit has never been the same.
The remarkable thing to me is that the auto industry was considered rogue by building "fast and dangerous" vehicles and it had to be reeled in by the US Congress because the auto industry obviously couldn't police itself. There fore the US Congress had laid the groundwork for the destruction of the US auto industry.

The same had been said of the housing industry, where government intervention actually added to the housing bubble and bad loans and now it's being used as an excuse to regulate the health insurance industry. Be careful what you ask for, government regulation is not your friend.