Interesting. General Motors bondholders have rejected a company plan to swap 10 percent of the company’s stock for $27 billion in unsecured debt; now GM is all but a lock for bankruptcy.

GM actually could have sweetened the deal and offered bondholders 29 percent of the company stock, after the UAW said it would take 20 percent, rather than 39 percent. In other words, the union made a pretty big concession; the company could have turned around and offered that equity to the bondholders, but didn’t.

But would the bondholders have taken it? You gotta read down to the bottom of the story to find out that the answer might have been, “probably not”:

Some analysts said GM’s bondholders may be holding out for better terms in bankruptcy.

Another factor complicating the decision of GM’s bondholders: Many large investors hold insurance policies on their bonds known as credit default swaps. Such policies would reimburse bondholders in the event of a “credit event” like a bankruptcy filing.

So if the company loses - bondholders gain.

Depending on what happens with the now-almost-certain GM bankruptcy, this may be a very important lesson for the country in how our system works. There has been much railing against the “greedy” unions for daring to want the company to live up to agreements signed by the company itself; the general assumption, at least amongst those hostile to labor, is that the UAW should be made to feel more of the pain, maybe even most of the pain, of GM’s bankruptcy.

The bondholders’ investment is more important, in the long run, than retiree benefits.

A bankruptcy court could indeed decide that, or something like it. Our increasingly Darwinian society marches on.

Every man for himself.