Drive My Car

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Once Upon a Car: The Fall and Resurrection of America's Big Three Auto Makers by Bill Vlasic.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/drive-my-car/

Government Motors...

Cartoon by Tom Meyers, San Francisco Chronicle.

So long little Ricky (Wagoner)!

If the Associated Press is right, we may have the first good news from Detroit in quite a while. According to the AP, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner is steping down immediately "at the request of the White House." Wagoner's leadership has been tone-deaf from both a political and public relations standpoint for months. Back when he flew by corporate jet to testify before Congress, we immediately asked the question: Why didn't he drive? Many others came to ask the same question.

Could it be that Wagoner actually believed that GM was building better cars, and yet simply felt they were not good enough for his butt to sit in?

We also noted, back at the time of the first hearing, that Wagoner read his comments from scripts and, strangely, didn't seem capable of answering questions on his feet - even while sitting.

In a final irony, Wagoner said on December 4, 2008, that he would not leave GM as, "I'm doing what I do because it adds a lot of value to the company." Not anymore, bud. You might think about taking a Chevy Cobalt with you for the drive home.

How Does This Make Sense?

According to the Associated Press, General Motors (GM) has already received $9.4 billion in government bailout funds - that's money that came from you and me - and expects to get $4 billion more in March. In other words, GM is burning through money like there's no tomorrow. Perhaps there isn't because, as explained in the book Burn Rate, the closer a company gets to dissolution the faster it burns through money in a failed attempt to stay in business for another day, week, or month.

However, after taking this type of money - and, remember, we're talking billions not millions here - you would think that GM would be SAVING the jobs of its workers. Not so, as GM today announced an immediate reduction of 10,000 autoworker jobs worldwide, with media sources reporting that these workers will not be offered buyout options. So then what is OUR money being used for?

Oh, we're told, calm down because GM CEO Rick Wagoner is going to work for just $1 a year. Too late, the bad decisions made by Wagoner and his management team have already resulted in these tragic job losses and what appears to be a continuing dim future for what MSNBC said was formerly America's greatest company. Wagoner could elect to work for a nickel this year, and it wouldn't change the fact that the flight of the once-mighty GM is about to come to an end. Brace for impact.