BREAKING NEWS msnbc.com news services updated 12 minutes ago
DETROIT - A senior Obama administration official has told NBC's John Yang that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was asked to step down by the administration.
True, but it's not the government's job to do so.
Expect more intrusions into private lives.
I sort of agree, Hachiroku, but it is no longer a private life when the government lends you billions of dollars.
I don't think the government is *ever* entitled to make personnel decisions. That goes WAY over the line.
Their requirement that Chrysler LLC finalize their deal with Fiat seems like a much more reasonable condition than dictating who goes and who stays. I have a problem in general when government regulates by imposing a solution (thou shalt include methanol in gasoline, thou shalt install a catalytic convertor on all vehicles, thou shalt not let Rick Wagoner be CEO) rather than regulating a *result* then letting people engineer the best way to a solution (thy fuels shall burn with XXX characteristics in these temperatures, thou shalt have tailpipe emissions no greater than xxx ppm this, yyy ppm that, zzz ppm the other, thou shalt get thy business plan together before another loan).
The government DIDNT make any "personal" decisions. They told GM that they had failed to come up with a viable plan, and that there would be NO MORE MONEY at the taxpayers expense under these circumstances.
The government became a substantial investor of taxpayer money.
When you put tons of money into a project, there is NO MORE "PERSONAL".
Now, I think government should stay out of independent business as much as they can but this case is special. GM did not play their cards very well at all. And the government said "No more allowance, sonny boy!"
The investors are entitled to make personnel decisions, and the government just became a really big major investor. Same thing could well have happened if a big investment group had taken them over instead.
I'm a little alarmed at some of the things I have seen GM doing to save money recently. Dumping Saturn, which seems like it might still be salvageable. Laying off the high performance design group that came up with pretty much all of the GM products with decent handling. If GM has _any_ future, it is due to groups like that.
Well, if you ask me, the government should have got involved when the whole Chrysler/Benz fiasco happened. As should the investors of both companies, who all got screwed in the deal.
--scott
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