Many years ago I met Wilbur Ross who was a college and business school classmate of a friend of mine.  Since that meeting Ross has become a billionaire.  He was not the investor that told me about the other side of adversity (see above), but he certainly understands how to turn around troubled companies.  He began by gluing back the wrecks of Michael Milken's junk-bond financings.  Last fall he was interviewed on National Public Radio.  He talked about one of his newest investments, SpiceJet, a low-cost airline in India.  During the interview he elaborated on one of the reasons for his investment in SpiceJet:

"India is a very large land mass, very large distances between the major population centers, but ground transportation is very, very difficult. They've not put enough into infrastructure for roads or even railroads to make that a very good means of transport. So air transport, we think, is uniquely important to India."

I found this interesting because the same can be said about many other emerging economies, such as China, Russia, etc.  And when you think about it - how easy is it to get to places like Spring Hill, Tennessee (the location of the original Saturn plant) or many other small factory towns in the United States?   Driving, taking a train, or bus is not practical when speed is of the essence to restart a shut-down assembly line.