I found this interesting interchange between GMAC's CFO and a Wall Street analyst on what it would take for GMAC to get back into leasing. The conversation took place on May 5, 2009:

Brian Johnson - Barclays Capital - Analyst
And what would it take on either your balance sheet, residual market or underwriting performance to get back into the leasing market either at GM or Chrysler?

Rob Hull - GMAC LLC CFO
The leasing market, it's not really about any of those factors. For us to reenter leasing, Brian, requires -- and we're working on this with General Motors -- requires a revisit of the very structure of how we do operating leases. And it may be that we go to finance leases and don't reenter operating leases. The leasing phenomenon was one that I don't think we will ever see leasing in the form it was in before.

Really, when you look at the finance end on a pure basis, you've got to make sure the risk-sharing makes sense, the residual values up front make sense, and that you have an economical instrument at the end for us to hold. So in our lease book that we are still sitting on, roughly $23 billion worth of leases, we want to make sure if we build that back again -- because it is shrinking very, very fast, with an average life of sort of two-plus years on that paper -- that we build something that has stronger credit quality and collateral quality and better assumptions on residual. So I don't -- I think it's going to take a restructuring of how we do leases in the United States before we enter that market in any real way.