“For all the support he still enjoys amid GM's salaried ranks, (CEO Rick) Wagoner's tenure was marked by unfulfilled promises, massive corporate losses, destroyed credit ratings, the insignificant value of GM shares, tens of thousands of jobs lost and the gutting of GM's sprawling operations.
“All true. Why it's true doesn't much matter anymore.”
Such is the new dynamic that will impact weakening brands far beyond American cars like Saturn and Hummer. This is the world in which live today. So who’ll be the next boss to take a Wagonerian fall?
Hard as it is to watch an American President ask for the resignation of the CEO of General Motors – it’s strange to even write the words – what else was there to do? While automakers the world over are struggling today, Detroit (including the UAW) lost touch with that world long before the economy tanked. GM’s value proposition had simply lost relevance (hello, UAW). It did not compel buyers to whip out checkbooks. It not only built cars to which people could just say no, its business model was in the junkyard. In this context, the spectacle of Rick Wagoner supplicating himself before Congress was too much. A public hanging was inevitable. We are now watching the politics of economics.
