Big Three Bailout

I saw this posted on a blog I enjoy reading. You can click the image to enlarge.

Automaker CEOs Ditch The Jets

Last month the CEOs of the big three American automakers went to Washington D.C. to ask the government for billions of dollars in handouts to protect them from bankruptcy (or postpone the inevitable).

Unfortunately their begging for money had a bit of a hollow ring to it, when it was discovered that each man had traveled to D.C. on private corporate jets. When asked if any of them would be willing to fly back on a commercial airline, no one volunteered. After all, who wants to slum it in first class when there's a luxury private jet waiting to take you home?

But having been called out on their bullshit Ford, GM and Chrysler have announced the closure of their fleet of private jets, at least to give the impression that they give a shit.

For the next meeting in Washington each CEO has agreed to make the ultimate sacrifice; they are going to drive in vehicles made by their own factories. That's mighty big of them.

As this fiasco continues to unfold, I just have less and less sympathy for them. Each of these men earn millions of dollars, and none of them can realistically be judged as having done anything approaching a decent job.

When you take a company like GM, and run it into the ground, then have to go to the government to beg for a bail out, it hardly seems reasonable to accept a multi-million dollar remuneration package.

But that's what these guys are doing, all the while churning out useless shit that no one wants to buy.

In my opinion it's time to let nature take its course. The weak die, the strong survive. The American auto makers have buried their heads in the sand, and stood by while foreign companies have led the way. And worse than that, not only have the big three churned out shitty cars for so many years now, they have been dishonest with the American people. They claim to support American workers, yet we've seen GM especially outsourcing jobs to Mexico and Canada in a bid to save money.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution to this horrible situation. If the government does nothing, bankruptcy looks inevitable for one or more of the big three. However, if radical changes are not made, this bailout will only postpone the inevitable.

No matter what happens, it seems like time to question the absurd financial packages enjoyed by American CEOs. It's one thing for a successful executive to be rewarded handsomely for the success of his or her company. But when the company falling apart due to bad management, and billions of dollars are needed just to keep the company afloat, it doesn't seem right that the man in charge is being rewarded so extravagantly for their utter failure.

GM - Can We Have Some Socialism Please?

General Motors, the world's second largest vehicle manufacturer, announced today that they have been hemorrhaging money for so long, they will be in serious financial trouble (AKA broke) by next year.

So they are now calling for the government to bail them out, handing them a big chunk of cash because they ran their company into the ground.

It should be noted that their CEO Rick Wagoner earns about $5 million a year. Has a pension worth about $19.7m. And when he leaves the company he is likely to get a golden handshake of $15m.

As you might imagine, I have several issues and opinions with all of this:

• GM make shit cars. They have for years. Their cars are unreliable, depreciate like a stone, guzzle gas, are not innovative, and there are far too many different makes and models. Given the sheer cost of creating a new car these days, you can't be making such a wide variety and still make profits. Better to produce fewer makes and models, and do the job well.
• How the fuck is the CEO making five million dollars a year (or about 500 times what a minimum wage worker makes), when he is doing such a shit job? I'm pretty sure you could grab a random guy off the shop floor of one of the factories and they'd do a comparable job, and wouldn't demand a $5m salary.
  
• I have very little sympathy for this company. They shafted American workers. Started buying parts from Canada, assembling cars in Mexico, all while advertising that people should buy American.
  
• What's with this sudden push for socialism? We heard all election about how the evil Obama was a socialist. But now all these rich Republican CEOs are going to the government cap in hand after their poor management decisions have led to the destruction of the companies they looted.