Under New Management

Not here. At General Motors. GM CEO Rick Wagoner has resigned at the demand of the Obama Administration:

March 30 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner was forced out after President Barack Obama’s task force decided he was unable to craft a plan to save the automaker he ran for more than eight years.

Wagoner, 56, said he agreed to an administration request to leave. Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson will become CEO and director Kent Kresa will succeed Wagoner as chairman. GM had been seeking as much as $16.6 billion in new U.S. loans after an initial installment of $13.4 billion.

James Joyner has a round-up of media and blogospheric reactions to the move. James notes:

To be fair, the oversight was conducted by a Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry. It was “comprised of cabinet members and other top officials” but “senior policy aides would handle much of the day-to-day work. The 10 senior aides advising the task force include economists, professors and former Obama campaign aides.” Well, who better than professors and politicos to run a multinational auto company? (If it’ll make you feel better, the team is ” headed by former investment banker Steve Rattner.” That does make you feel better, right?)

The Wikipedia entry on Steven Rattner should brighten your day even more:

A graduate of Brown University, Rattner started his career as a reporter with The New York Times, first at the Washington bureau, where he became close friends with Times’ ownership-family member Arthur Sulzberger, who also was at the time working as a reporter; and then at the London bureau. Subsequently, Rattner quit journalism and joined Morgan Stanley, where he founded their Communications Group. In 1989 he joined Lazard as a General Partner; he founded their Media and Communications Group and became their deputy chairman and deputy CEO before leaving to found Quadrangle in 2000.

He is married to Maureen White, the former National Finance Chair for the Democratic Party. He has four children.

A career in the media and the finance of the media clearly is just the ticket for providing solid advice on getting GM back on its feet in the automaking business. As Lincoln is said to have quipped “If this is tea, bring me coffee. If it’s coffee, bring me tea.”

It’s getting harder and harder to tell technocracy from nepotism and political connections these days.

3 comments… add one
  • This administration seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, as the previous one was of Big Oil. When it is only Big Media of one sort or another that sells these people to us, alas for Democracy.

  • Brett Link

    Good Lord, another bloody finance-sector chief? I suppose that’s inevitable, considering how massive the financial sector has gotten and how influential they are in terms of political influence (plus the Cult of the CEO and the like), but it’s still annoying.

    Then again, Chrysler hired Bob Nardelli, the man who helped stagnate Home Depot for more than five years and then walked away with a massive bonus, so maybe the alternative isn’t really helpful.

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