premise: For General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., both hungry for cash, have had to pledge some of their most essential assets -- such as factories and equipment -- as collateral to win badly needed new loans, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
  GM, which posted a 10.6 billion dollar loss last year, in July extended a credit line from a syndicate of banks under new terms that give the company a 4.6 billion dollar revolving loan backed by North American assets including inventory, plants and property, said the report
  Ford also moved in the same direction. As part of a conference call on its earnings restatement, Chief Financial Officer Don Leclair said Tuesday that Ford aims to put together a loan deal that is likely to be secured "by a significant portion of the assets of the company, according to the report.
  Ford's losses amount to about 7 billion dollars so far this year, and the company is on pace to approach GM's 10.6 billion dollar 2005 loss.
   Why did GM and Ford pledge some of their most essential assets?
hypothesis: to win badly needed new loans