Wagoner: 'They requested... 'I step aside''

"Wagoner, president of the ailing automaker since 2000 . . ."

Mark, Rick Wagoner was the chairman of the board of GM, not the president. Fritz Henderson was the president; now he's the chairman.

You should study up on this stuff before posting. Better yet, confine yourself to writing about something that, as Dale Carnegie would say, you've earned the right to write about.

Obama has opened himself up to criticism of both too much government oversight of private industry by ousting Wagoner and a misstep in rebuffing more efforts to save GM and Chrysler. This is a very bold move.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Whoa. I'll bet the sahreholders are really pleased to hear that the White House is now pulling the strings at GM. First they install Liddy at AIG. Then they threaten to nationalize the banks, Now they instructed the CEO of GM to step down - and he did it.

I think I'll stay out of the market for the time being.

Can you say "tenth amendment"?

It is time to tell the UAW that the party is over. Gettlefinger should be asked to "step aside" as well.

Why hasn't Obama asked the CEO'S of AIG to step down?
They have messed up more than the car makers!!!!!!!

DaveB,

"Wagoner, who became president of the automaker in 2000 and has served as chairman and CEO since 2003..." is what the article said and is accurate. Wagoner stepped up to Chairman and CEO from the presidency in 2003.

You should read this stuff before you comment on it. You should quote it accurately before you gripe about it. Dale Carnegie would agree....

Ib the Obama administration is now going to be dictating terms of employment, including, I'd bet, changing the rules for health care and retirement benefits, how about the administration turn its attention to Congressional retirement and health care? Solid gold retirement, indexed to inflation (unlike just about everyone else's). Double dipping encouraged.

Let's go after THOSE benefits, shall we? We'd probably save the sinking economy almost immediately.

I hope he is the first of many to go.He wrote the book on how not to run a company.Lets see what he going away package looks like.

DaveB...Just plain wrong. He became president and chief executive officer in June 2000 and was elected chairman on May 1, 2003.

Wake up folks. This is communism at its best. Since when should the President dictate who should oversee these companies. He'll put on of his lefty socialist bound cronies in there. that will teach us.

DaveB....you should do you research before making a comment like that. The article said he was president until 2003, which is a fact.

I might add....is this the man you wish to defend? During his reign, GM shares have plummeted from around $60 in June 2000 to as low as $1.27 in March 2009, a loss of approximately 98%, and GM's share of North American cars sales went from 28.3% to 18.3%.
As far as Fritz Henderson, in 2004, Henderson was appointed chairman of GM-Europe, based in Zurich, Switzerland. After becoming vice chairman and chief financial officer in January 2006, in March 2008, he became GM president and chief operating officer.

While I think Wagoner needed to go, the idea of the WH dictating which executives run companies is a recipe for disaster to the shareholders and taxpayers.

Look for dishonesty in financial statements like you've never imagined now that the politicians have a direct stake in corporate results.

The pols will make Lay and Skilling's Enron look like the model for transparent financials.

And I bet that the lemmings still don't believe that the government is attempting to take over industry, banking....

Wagoner has to step down while the ones who cause this recession still have their jobs. Barney Franks, Chris Dobbs, Tim Geithner are still in office. Not only should they go but they should be in jail for their actions!

Want the money to save your pathetic company? Do what we say.

That's how this works!

Hey Tom, I agree!

"He wrote the book on how not to run a company.Lets see what he going away package looks like."

The only reason he probably didn't step aside on his own is that he knew he would never get a multi-million dollar bonus with the feds being involved like oh so many others who ripped off their companies as they walked out the door.

So did BO plenty also ask the head of the UAW to step aside? He's as much of a roadblock to progress as the GM CEO. Let GM file for bankruptcy.

Of course, BO won't dare ask for meaningful concessions and changes from big labor - that'd be anti-democratic.

...And Bob Lutz's reign of incompetence continues.

He failed at Chrysler.

He failed in his own company (Cunningham).

He's been failing at GM.

Bob Lutz was the one who said that hybrid cars are "bad business." If anyone should have been tossed, it should be one of the worst auto executives in history: Bob Lutz.

Obama's "discontent with the progress that automakers have made in reshaping their business since the government started providing $17.4 billion in assistance" is obviously a red herring, especially considering his own earlier words saying that recovery will "take some time." We shouldn't expect things to start working overnight but he does? Hardly.

Translation: The restructuring taking place at GM wasn't "green" enough to satisfy D.C.'s distate for the populace's use of gasoline. Obama's discontent is not with the speed of the progress, it's with his personal view of the direction. A scapegoat was required to "prove" that only government, in its infinite wisdom, knows how businesses should be run.

Wonder if Congress will get a slice of GM now for their owen pockets like one one Congressman's wife did from the Stimulus.

Wonder if she returned it ?????

Hasn't it been said for years that the car industry is nothing more than a healthcare company thats makes cars?

Umm...well let's see. You can get there by revealing the fact GM sold their battery patents to Chevron. Chevron then sued Toyota for their Electric Vehicle program.

So where does the bs start and end people? Blinded by the sickening truth.

Wagoner, who became president of the automaker in 2000 and has served as chairman and CEO since 2003,

They very guy who ran the company into the ground is not a scapegoat. I can't understand why the shareholders left him in charge for so long after such a losing record. They are as much to blame as the guy who was steering the rudder. As far as I know, for years the auto industry has been engineering products with built in obsolescence.

As I heard a few months ago on C-SPAN, by the time something innovative would be able to come close enough to come to market, they'd scrap the whole project and start working on something else to the frustration of the engineers trying to build a quality product.

I'm also suspect that they would continue to build something that is so reliant on the oil industry unless there is some collusion in the process. I can't believe with the minds we have in this country the big three couldn't come up with something better like:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/siliconalley/green-tech/ge_invests_in_tesla_2009_3.html

VW & BMW have strong unions (maybe stronger than GM & Chrysler) with benefits to match, and they're not in bad shape. Could it be that they make cars that consumers actually want to buy?

Kenny B. et. al:

My original quote was accurate (copied directly from the article, using cut-and-paste). Mark Silva changed the article after I called his attention to it.