American will come out of this thing the General Motors of airlines. Still around, but in greatly reduced form.

They've run out of room to maneuver thanks to their debt and all their previous bankruptcies. And with all the strings attached to those federal dollars, their options are pretty slim. If and when they declare Chapter 11, the feds will force them to make the kinds of cuts that GM executives had to make back in '09. They will have to spin off everything that isn't essential to the business to pay down debt and move forward.

GM lost Delphi, GMAC, a whole slew of brands (Hummer, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, etc.) and shuttered their most inefficient factories to consolidate production. They extracted huge concessions from the UAW. They all but abandoned the passenger sedan segment to focus on the one thing that still made them money: trucks and SUV's.

I realize the analogy isn't 100% perfect, but as a blueprint of how a major American corporation integrated into the fabric of everyday life confronts an existential crisis, the GM bankruptcy and bailout is pretty instructive.