Remember the Good GM, Bad GM plan?  It was a speculative plan for GM to enter and exit bankruptcy quickly by essentially splitting itself into two companies, one that would buy all the "good" assets -- Buick, Cadillac, Chevy, GMC, and the working capital (factories, etc.) -- while Bad GM would get to keep the less profitable parts (Hummer, Saturn, Saab, crumbling factories, and apparently a golf course in New Jersey).  Well, today, a judge said GM can go forward [NYT] with the good/bad split, and at a press conference tomorrow, the GM CEO is expected to announce that GM will leave bankruptcy after only a few weeks.

What's that mean?  Really, not much, except that this is a particularly anti-climatic ending to something that could have gone very, very badly.  As the NYT article notes, the big battles were actually fought during the Chrysler bankruptcy hearings, where bondholders and others with complaints were shown exactly how hard and dirty the government was willing to play ball.  The weird part of this, as was noted in a great Planet Money piece a few weeks ago, is that any other company of this size -- if there were other companies of this size -- facing bankruptcy without government support would have languished for years in court, and would have faced lawsuits over the pressure that their bankrupcty manager applied on all parties to come to an agreement.  Here, since that role was filled by the mysterious auto task force, bankruptcy was just a brief pit-stop for GM.  From The Times earlier this week:

I'm glad to see GM out of bankruptcy, because a leaner, greener, functional GM could ultimately benefit the entire country's economy.  I do worry, though, that this has gone so fast that it may have done some permanent damage to the bankruptcy system in the U.S., despite assurances from the administration that these are special cases.  Too many times of late we've seen things that start as exceptions become the rule.

And while I'm being a little storm cloud about all of this, I'd like to see the Obama administration, which is about to own Good GM, come out and explain exactly who's doing what behind the scenes.  I have yet to see even a concrete title for Steven Rattner, who seems to be running this auto task force, and that old story about 31-year-old Brian Deese doing the heavy lifting is still hard to believe.  Again, I'm glad to see GM out of bankruptcy -- but I hope tomorrow's press conference provides not just back-patting for that accomplishment, but some clear goals and outlines of where this new vehicle is head, and who's driving.