Story of the Day: The axe swingeth, but in a different direction...

Well this week's political/economic news started off with a bang - it was announced that as part of its bailout, General Motors' chairman Rick Wagoner (pictured above) was forced to resign.

GM will get 60 days and Chrysler 30 days in which to make a final push toward proving they can run viable businesses. If Chrysler succeeds, it will receive a $6 billion loan. In GM's case, the officials would not specify how much money the carmaker might receive.

In addition to the resignation, it was broadcasted that the companies had to make drastic changes, including concessions by the auto union UAW. Now of course, this leads me to think this: at what point does the administration believe that a union contract is more malleable and passable than the supposed "contracts" that insured the fatcats at AIG, Citigroup and Bank Of America get their million-dollar bonuses and perks. What the fuck is that? Remember where you came from, dude.

Of course, the right isn't too happy either, whether it takes the "interfering with private business" bullshit or the left wondering why the banks are left with no restrictions and dinosaurically huge (yes, I made up the fucking word!)..

Why is Rick Wagoner getting the boot while the management of the big banks remains in place? Whatever resonance the question has on first blush, it gets more complicated on further inspection. Citi does not have the same CEO it did at the start of the crisis. And the government installed a new CEO at AIG after the initial bailout. Another rejoinder might be that the automakers' plight is of a much more longstanding vintage than that of the finance barons, though I suspect, as we learn more, we'll be revisiting those assumptions. And even after getting substantial government aid, I think Wagoner's the first auto industry CEO to get the boot. So perhaps we should be asking why it is that something like this hasn't happened sooner.

Amen.

The only difference between the fucked up financial industry and the fucked up auto industry is that the financial industry has found a successful way to have us by the balls, scaring the nation and most importantly its government that they are all truly necessary and that any shakeup to their status quo and they'll throw some sort of 1000-point hissy fit.

What Obama is hopefully laying the groundwork for is once the Wall Street thing settles, to do the same slice and dice that he's doing otherwise. However it's best to do this when you've got the rest of the country on your side. Otherwise they can play the "everything is fine" card until the next bubble breaks.

And General Motors as a company should be just ashamed in general. They were all so fucking proud (and that includes a good portion of its workers as well) of the behemoth gas-guzzling shit that they were producing until OPEC decided to pull the rug from under them. Just for the Hummer alone part of me wants the whole shit to fail if it wouldn't have too much an effect on the whole area (bad enough as it is)...