"We are not going to pick winners and losers from Washington, D.C.," said Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, summing up a broad consensus among the candidates in a debate here.
"Let the consumers pick winners and losers. It doesn't make any difference if it's Wall Street...or some European country. If you are too big to fail, you are too big."
The debate, focused on the economy in an industrial state hit hard by the recession, came on a day when U.S. stock markets plummeted out of fears of a spreading debt crisis in Italy, the world's seventh-largest economy.
The eight candidates did touch on other issues. Businessman Herman Cain again denied allegations of sexual harassment.
"The American people deserve better than someone being tried in a court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations," he said to applause from the audience at Oakland University in Rochester, a suburb of Detroit.
"Voters have voted with their dollars and they're saying they don't care about the character assassination."
The same audience booed when the moderator from CNBC asked former Gov. Mitt Romney about the allegations.
"Herman Cain is the person to respond to these questions. He just did," Romney said. "The people in this room and across the country can make their own assessment."
Pressed on the looming European debt crisis, the eight candidates sounded a similar refrain against any direct U.S. aid to stem it.
"There's not a lot that the United States can directly do for Italy right now," Cain said. "They're really way beyond the point of return that we as the United States can save them."
Romney said he'd support international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, but would provide no direct aid to banks in Europe to stop the crisis from spreading.
"Europe is able to take care of their own problems," Romney said. "There will be some who say here that banks in the U.S. that have Italian debt, that we ought to help those, as well. My view is no, no, no. We do not need to step in to bail out banks either in Europe or banks here in the U.S. that may have Italian debt."
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said the U.S. should let debtors fail.
"You have to let it liquidate," Paul said. "If you prop it up, you'll do what we did in the Depression, prolong the agony...You're going to perpetuate this for a decade or more."
Romney also defended his opposition to the U.S. government bailing out the auto industry, long the industrial mainstay of Michigan where they were speaking.
"I care about this state and the auto industry, I guess, like no one else on this stage," said Romney, a native of Detroit whose father, George, headed American Motors and went on to serve as the state's governor in the 1960s.
He said he preferred to let the auto industry go through bankruptcy reorganization on its own, rather than with taxpayer help and government direction.
"Whether it was by President Bush or President Obama, it was the wrong way to go," he said.
Also participating in the debate were Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
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