Roger's Rules

March 29th, 2009 2:35 pm

Comedy at Bloomberg

You have to love the deadpan humor of the folks at Bloomberg (and at Reuters, which preserves the poker face in its report):

General Motors Corp CEO Rick Wagoner is going to step down, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

Bloomberg says people familiar with situation did not say why Wagoner is leaving.

Any guesses about why Mr. Wagoner might be stepping down? Could this have something to do with it?

“GM and Chrysler have run through most of the $17.4-billion in emergency loans approved by the U.S. government late last year and are at risk of bankruptcy without immediate assistance from the U.S. Treasury.”

Or this?

gm3

* * * UPDATE * * * Actually, The Drudge Report says it was this:

GM CEO resigns at Obama’s behest

And why not? GM is now in effect a US government subsidiary. You’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing, I predict.

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12 Comments

1. Ed Driscoll » What’s Good For GM…:

[...] Roger Kimball writes, “You have to love the deadpan humor of the folks at Bloomberg (and at Reuters, which preserves the poker face in its report)” that they can write with a straight face, “people familiar with situation did not say why” General Motors Corp CEO Rick Wagoner is stepping down. [...]

Mar 29, 2009 - 2:59 pm 2. lefroy:

You put a giant corporation on life support and it burns through $17b in a few months! A straw in the wind for the new universal health care plan.

The sensible thing for GM is to hive off the car business – perhaps sell it to China – and concentrate on its core strength, the aged care business. Just like the plan for the newspapers, GM could then be turned into a public trust. The times call for bold ideas.

Mar 29, 2009 - 3:02 pm 3. vb:

This ties into Merkel too. She has been catching flack for not solving the Opel problem, which, of course, she can’t do till she knows what GM’s plans are.

Mar 29, 2009 - 3:24 pm 4. Gaffe Prices:

When I look at that graph, I can’t wait til the journalist jargon starts saying that “while things may not be that much better, they surely aren’t that much worse (flatline). This is the situation we have stabilized.

Mar 29, 2009 - 4:14 pm 5. John S. Ford:

Is this what we’ve come to? Now the POTUS makes decisions previously thought the province of GM’s Board of Directors and shareholders?

I know one thing that’s not “too big to fail” and that’s the United States’ free market system.

Mar 29, 2009 - 4:52 pm 6. David Thomson:

Don’t blame me. I have been saying all along that GM should have gone bankrupt. That’s how our economic system clears the deck. Government interference in the marketplace has only made things far worse. Oh well, what’s 17 billion dollars between friends?

Mar 29, 2009 - 5:33 pm 7. gaetano catelli:

re: “That’s how our economic system clears the deck.”

it has long been known that the global auto industry suffers from capacity vastly in excess of demand, and that even in the best of times, too many players result in “Big Three” profit margins of only 2-3%. and now, with India getting into the act, forget about it.

but, shouldn’t we avoid doing anything that might ’sink the ship’ at the present moment, now that the ship has hit an iceberg of frozen credit — before we “clear the deck”?

Mar 29, 2009 - 7:21 pm 8. ehunter:

What I am curious about is..exactly what did
GM tell the Govt was going to happen otherwise?
And what did those handing out the money believe was going to happen, and exactly how far did they have to go to fetch those delusions?

Mar 29, 2009 - 11:10 pm 9. heathermc:

Two Drudge headlines work so well together: Top GM honcho quits at behest of Obama, because the company is broke (again);
and
Obama the Magnificent heads to Europe with an entourage of FIVE HUNDRED courtiers. I guess that if a government goes broke, it is different from when a company goes broke???
(OK OK, the government has a printing press… )

Mar 29, 2009 - 11:49 pm 10. Roger’s Rules » “Tectonic change,” Barack Obama, and You:

[...] of nescience: “people familiar with situation did not say why Wagoner is leaving.” As I noted at the time, it wasn’t difficult to come up with reasons the GM board might wish to bid [...]

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:59 am 11. Christie Davies:

Back in Nixon’s time I was already writing ” What’s bad for General Motors is good for the USA”
Nixon artificially held the price of gas down and did not allow the free market to operate because it would damage GM, already a dinosaur.
Britain had British Leyland motors, with lousy management,poor workers and over-powerful unions.
The British government threw tax-payers money at it in vain. Does that sound familiar?
I had shares in the company but I would have been willing to see it sold to the Japanese for $5 at an early stage
Do you remember when Galbraith said big corporations like GM were so big and powerful that they were immune from market forces?

Mar 30, 2009 - 12:25 pm 12. Steynian 342 « Free Canuckistan!:

[...] to Congressional legislation, but directly from the White House”; Comedy at Bloomberg: “GM is now in effect a US government subsidiary” …. (pw, [...]

Apr 1, 2009 - 11:04 am