White House Boots GM CEO

Thanks for reporting this, MS.

Glad to see Jay Carney still talks to you even if on background.
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Thanks for reporting this.

The White House itself asked him to step down? If so, it's about time. Wagoner was either unwilling or unable to take the steps necessary to put the auto industry back on the path to being able to compete. This is good news.

Buh-bye, Rick.

Now if they could only start making TARP heads start to roll then there might be some real progress...

"the furture of the American auto industry"
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I'm thinking this is a typo?
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"The Furture of the American Auto Industry is . . . Naugahyde!"

It should be noted that GM are the worst of the lot --with GMAC/Homecomings financial/Ditech being one of the worst of the lending lot --deeply involved in the consumer-side roots of the financial crisis.
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Lost another loan to Ditech, indeed.

Do I even dare ask the size of his severance?

Story on the IHT site:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/30auto.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
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Won't know size or color of Wagoner's parachute until after Obama's speech tomorrow.
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Ummm . . . MS, a link to a story about your post? More of a standard feature than an optional extra. Just sayin'.

Well, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I want to be ecstatic because one of the worst CEO's in the history of America is finally gone. On the other hand, I want to be depressed because he was only fired because the government made it a condition of saving his company.
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Why and how has this man kept a job for so long? On his watch the stock price fell from $60 to $2. That's 3000%. Three thousand. With three zeros. I think the fact that he was still there at all is a complete and total indictment of the entire current structure of American corporate management.

Here's a link for you, Friar & MS, although without the kick-in-the-pants angle:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/29/news/companies/auto_bailout/index.htm

Friar
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Notice he said he got the email directly so there is no link to a story. Its his story.

FT:
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I think that SG is correct about that...

I wouldn't necessarily call cutting and pasting a White House blast e-mail reporting a story.

PNNTO:
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At least it wasn't "...in an email this afternoon, White House officials confirmed that CEO Wagoner was stepping down", right?
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I actually kind of like that we get to see the email...

Sorry, in case that wasn't clear, that was a joke...it's pretty ridiculous that we get treated to anonymity again for no reason.

Ha, indeed SZ.

I would say Scherer should have linked to the transcript of Obama's interview with Scheiffer. That WAS pretty lazy. The reason for the anonymity I assume is because whomever sent the email was getting in front of the President because the AP broke the story about Wagoner stepping down a few hours ago and rumors were rapant that the White House forced him to. I imagine President Obama will speak on it tomorrow for the record. Not saying the anonymity was warranted but just saying thats probably how it all went down.

@sgw & sz,
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I take your point - nevertheless, it's nice to have a link to information about the subject under discussion if it's a relatively new development.

Information about Wagoner and GM, that is, not Obama and Schieffer. I'm not thinking straight tonight.

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"But it's got to be one that's realistically designed to weather this storm and to emerge at the other end much more lean, mean and competitive than it currently is."
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Not enough. Yes, the buck stops at Wagoner's doorstep when it comes to GM's failure to thrive, but...if anyone thinks that restructuring GM and dumping its CEO is going to make up for the wholesale outsourcing of the US manufacturing base, monstrous US health care costs, and the inability of US companies to compete with foreign-government subsidized goods, they're nuts.
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It's not just the automakers that have serious structural issues.

g_crush
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...if anyone thinks that restructuring GM and dumping its CEO is going to make up for the wholesale outsourcing of the US manufacturing base, monstrous US health care costs, and the inability of US companies to compete with foreign-government subsidized goods, they're nuts.
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After we get done with that, Larry Summers will have Tim Geithner attempt to jump the Channel.

[...] Posted by Justin Fox | Comments (0) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This So Rick Wagoner is out at General Motors, at the request of the Obama administration. I've never known quite to make of the guy—most of [...]

Lots of questions about American corporate management in general, and/or whther the change at the top of GM will fix things there.

First, management DOES mattter. Look at Ford -- it brought in a non-auto guy who immediately understood there was a liquidity problem, and raised the cash to get them this far without having to resort to a bailout. Wagoner was there for decades and didn't see it.

AND, Wagoner did not understand that the easy way out was the wrong way -- i.e., he kept trying to sell Hummers and such because if he could, he could make the high profit margins that would allow him to avoid the hard decisions that had to be made to fix the deep structural problems at GM, such as unaffordable union commitments, and the building of gas guzzlers that could not compete with the energy-efficient cars that limited oil supplies demanded.

And by the way, where was GM's board of directors in all this??? Good ole boys who were either incompetent or reticent to ask the very, very obvious questions.

Look, I helped choose the board that guided the company I helped found, and that board -- though paid much, much less than the GM board -- would never have let things get this bad.