WASHINGTON - “Nothing,” said a General Motors spokesman last week, “has changed relative to the GM board’s support for the GM management team during this historically difficult economic period for the U.S. auto industry.” Nothing? Not even the evaporation of almost all shareholder value?

GM’s statement comes as the mendicant company is threatening to collapse and make a mess unless Washington, which has already voted $25 billion for GM, Ford and Chrysler, provides up to $50 billion more - the last subsidy until the next one. The statement uses the 11 words after “team” to suggest that the company’s parlous condition has been caused by events since mid-September. That is as ludicrous as the mantra that GM is “too big to fail.” It has failed; the question is what to do about that.