White House tells GM boss to step down

if your company is losing that much money you should be fired. why did it take the president to figure this out? the board should be fired as well they approved all the dumb ideas he put forth.

jangetsbored and hesayshehatesthemall,

You both say you've been married 20 years [coincidence? collusion? you still haven't told your other spouses you eloped?]

You both have been tested (by non-response) and remain obsessed to confirm rumors you have just manufactured [obtuse? obstreperous? recently escaped from tabloid journalism schools?]

And good of you both to dodge current89's question

--- "Okay Jan, tell that to the 100,000's of GM employees. But you wouldn't care about their livelihoods would you?"

Those obsessed with and enraged by politics have this tendency. If they find an infestation of termites in a mansion they burn it down.

Normal people don't see the sense of wiping out human occupants to check a minor infestation. However, to people politically obsessed, extreme to very self-righteous folks - recalling the Russian, Chinese and Cambodian revolutions - it is less important to preserve and protect the lives and families of hapless bystanders, than vent outrage -- at insects-in-charge .

Ruining the careers and directly causing harm to the families of more than 100,00 humans -- to punish a dozen -- is what we mean by Way Too Radical.

Paratus,

These are remarkable times.

The Right is splintering into fringes and factions, none of which actually seem well, conservative.

Let me qualify that for the benefit of Libertarians. Obviously the lovely hallucination which envisions a deregulated corporate paradise refuses to recognize a simple human fact.

In a corrupt world people cope by adapting to corruption. Thus there is more of it. It is a contagion. Too often in history, socially lethal.

In a corrupt corporate world, where you get ahead fastest using the expedient of legal bribes to politicians (in the form of campaign contributions, lavish speakers fees to celebrate boilerplate platitudes, and media sales pitches to promote we-don't need-no-govament themes) it just isn't adaptive to make a great product – here in the US - and just, you know, sell it on its merits.

Becoming really big requires a range of swindles, using some nice media-saavy bait and switch, to supplement a con. In scale alone, in this we are unsurpassed

The message to the credulous? Surrender your need to be protected by government from all the companies run by crooks.

In favor of? Tax breaks for the rich, and further promises to throttle a government long ago so completely neutered to protect corporate interest – that science is now an Enemy Of State.

As in Stalin's Russia. Science is supposed to be run, sorry, “corrected” and edited, by checking whether or not it has any financial impact on business profits. That's economic taboo.

To the neos, corporations all are altar boys in the far right choir. Ron Paul regards them as so sublimely innocent that during his time in a Congressional hearing, instead of lambasting Mr. Geithner with 'what the hell do we need the Fed for'? Dr. Paul pleaded the case that long before trial a business must be proved guilty, before being proved guilty in a court of law.

Among others, here is the inherent flaw in Libertarian thought. It is assumed that private corporations are inherently rational. They are uber-human collectives of virtue. Further, that doing business forces them to be honest – if they are not, and make a car which explodes on impact, a competitor will step in.

Corporations automatically are regarded as our best citizens, regardless of how much they pollute, lag behind in technology or quality, monopolize, corrupt, and price gouge.

They all are stellar, except for one private corporation which embodies all the evils of deregulation and unaccountability. Evils which no libertarian wishes to acknowledge directly.

One which Libertarians demand must be crushed forthwith – that being the Federal Reserve. All of the abuses corporations aren't supposed to use the Federal Reserve embodies that very evil. Conservative dogma insists that instead of controlling it as an arms length agency of government, it must be demolished. Replace it? Never.

This is a fate which would be tolerated in no other corporate instance. In New Conservative terms - why isn't the Fed just another association of top businessmen protecting their profits at vast public expense?

No other organization is as pro-business, pro-free trade, pro-deregulation, obviously it's already on the Right side. But instead of recognizing that once again we have been looted and bankrupted by the absence of necessary regulation, Libertarians demand more of the same poison. Perhaps because corporations are not prey to human psychology.

Hence too the split with actual conservative thinking – meaning prudence. Obey the law – don't demolish it. Support honest effort – never pump money into whatever ponzi scheme offers the most political kickbacks. Support businesses which demonstrate integrity, openness and lawfulness – not any slick crooked high profile collection of neo-Mafiosi with limousines and top lawyers.

Remarkable times....Really.

This is disturbing but hardly surprising. If the government throws money at a company they do have the right to have a say in the running of that company. Don't get me wrong, I do NOT think the gov. should be doing this nor do they have the authority, it is a usurpation of power, but if one provides financing they have the right to look out for that investment. When you make a deal with the devil you will get screwed every time.
This is why we need a return to the Constitutional limitations we have abandoned. The gov. will insert itself more and more, if that is possible, into our lives under the Golden Rule Theory (he who has the gold makes the rule). More and more socialism.
I understand why Mr. Wagoner left. My son ETS'ed from the Army because he did not want to serve under the Marxist in Chief. This is not the direction in which we need to be going.

well he wont suffer financially I'm guessing. He will step down and just let other people mess it up now.

"Good riddance, and don't slam the door" never was more appropriate.

We've known since 73 that Big Auto was on the wrong track. But they were not without certain political skills. They whined (and wined) the right people.

Yet over the decades, as consumers compared what the Big Three presumed the public could be sold, compared to what foreigners, with higher employee costs, offered - the switch began.

First, industry dominance fragmented. Second, instead of actually competing, using successive waves of brilliant engineering innovation, we settled for automotive welfarism, and TVs embedded in the ceilings of vans. Wow. And it's only a hundred bucks to fill the tank! Progress!

What progress?

While Big Auto lagged on technology, exported jobs, and dis-employed millions, folks off shore got all the breaks and our jobs. In retrospect was that really clever? Increasing numbers of dis-employed people now couldn't afford our own cars, if any.

It was and is, a mess of short term idiocies. Part of an ideological mania which refused, and still refuses, to recognize the importance of a coherent national industrial strategy to augment national security. You mean protectionism? No, I mean the ability to create adequate wealth to defend and make prosperous the country we live in.

With theories as inane as "Trickle Down!" we have been sold a bag of shit, and told that, 'Yes! But it is HIGHLY PERFUMED SHIT!'

But whether you are made hostage to a foreign monarch in Saudi Arabia, or a rich loon with shares in oil wealth here, the simple fact remains - transportation is too vital a sector to be left to the whims of chauffered blowhards and supine politicians.

To tank an enterprise as huge as GM, or an entire financial system, takes an incredible inability to pay adequate attention to necessities, beyond the bottom line right now.

What about the bottom line tomorrow? Next quarter? Next decade? Anyone experienced in what companies must do to survive understands the necessity to stay ahead of the competition with R&D that the public will buy...

Instead the perverse belief that whatever management idiocies were good for management was an expense which could be sold to consumers (and this would keep the company solvent) - is dead.

Ignore the consumer, ignore the importance of transportation to the economic health of any country and what you have to sell may as well be snow to Eskimos..

Too bad they didn't take him up to the roof & tell him.

That would be sad if GM went belly up. No more warranty work on my truck and Ford will take over Transformers 3 :(

GM bet wrong when it canned the electric car. They thought that they could get in bed with the gas companies would.

Serves them right for sleeping with whores.

Now President Obama, show us some real big balls.

Go after the oil and gas companies.

There are too many car companies to begin with, if they can't handle the competition then they should get out of the game. I don't recall Studebaker or Packard getting any bailouts from the government. Yes they're gone now, but that's how capitalism works, and these guys should be gone too.

Too much government intervention in private business. It should be the stockholders holding them accountable, and if they aren't then vote them out at the next shareholder's meeting. Our entire country will be owned by the Federal government. Doesn't sound like Democracy to me.

Well somebody has to take charge! Might as well be the President.