{OT} Good-bye Rick Wagoner

I'm no fan of this fellow but this is just wrong. Having the government telling the CEO of a company he's fired doesn't sit well with me, no matter how bad he may have performed his job. That distinction should belong to the board of directors and shareholders. I guess this is what happens when socialism and nationalization is embraced by the people. Who's going to be next?

The borrower becomes slave to the lender, unless your AIG then it's the other way around.

I disagree. The US Government is soon to be GMs biggest lender. If instead of the Government, a big bank had loaned GM billions, they certainly would have been within their rights to ask Wagoner to resign as a condition of the loan. Same applies to the US Government. Recently when Toyota started down the tubes, the CEO was also asked to resign. In both cases it is justified.

Many US Boards of Directors are a joke. They are made up of people with a similar mind set and in many cases the same people are on boards for multiple companies. There is way too much of a "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" atttitude among US Boards of Directors. Stockholder have essentially given complete control of the companies over to the the top management of the company. If things worked like they should, the owners of GM (i.e. the Stockholders) would have dumped Wagner months/years ago.

This is one area where Ford has an advantage over GM. The Ford family still controls Ford. They realized the prior CEO was going the wrong way and pulled the plug on him. They were able to go out and look for the best available CEO. In theory GM's board could do this as well, but in fact, they are so inbred they can't see their own shortcomings and they keep hiring clones of the last CEO. Maybe the Government will shake up this process. Back in the first half of the last century when GM almost went bankrupt, the DuPont family bailed out GM. The first thing they did was force out Durant (creator of GM), and installed Alfred Sloan - the CEO that really got GM going. Maybe history will repeat this time.

Ed

Obama can't sell additional bail out money to the country if Wagoner remains. It's all posturing. GM will get more money in the end.

And for Mr. Obama and his cabinet...you don't have to keep using the "i" word. Everyone in the U.S. knows that it was W and the Republicans that got us into this horrendous situation, so you don't have to keep reminding everyone that you inherited the problems.

What you say has some merit regarding the board but I don't think the government should have become the primary shareholder of GM in the first place and they definitely are the worst ones to be choosing who should run the company. They have already shown how well bureaucrats are at running anything.

And most of the people runnig GM aren't burecrats? The replacement has already been announced - Fritz Henderson. Mr Henderson is another old GM hand and was already in line to repalce Mr. Wagoner. The goverment just forced the change sooner. I expect Mr. Henderson won't last long. The GM Board is going through a major shake-up. I imagine as soon as things settle down, they'll shop around for an external repalcement.

Ed