"I am a person who believes you have got a great work force. You have a great plant. General Motors is separating the bad GM from the good and reinventing themselves and looking for a new path to take. I would think they understand they have a valuable asset there."

Emerging from a meeting with Tennessee officials — the first of three meetings with state and federal delegations on Wednesday — Clarke said he wanted to lay out what GM was looking for in a new site. "I think a lot of (the discussion) was just getting an understanding," he said. "We wanted to make ourselves available to answer questions at whatever level of detail the state delegations wanted."

"It is a relatively new plant and it also is a plant that has had a history of good performance," he said. Cole said he is "hard pressed to think of a reason why they wouldn't" be picked.

While the loans secured by properties located in the worst performing states account for less than 6% of the Fitch-rated universe by balance, they make up nearly one-fourth of all real estate owned (REO) loans tracked in the index — an indication that special servicers are finding limited opportunities to work out or to quickly dispose of assets in these locations. Each of the preceding states has an unemployment rate significantly higher than the 8.9% national rate.