Rattner's memoir opens curtain on auto bailouts
There's a lot more to chew on in this story. Click to see it all: Rattner's memoir opens curtain on auto bailouts.
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The Obama administration vetoed attempts by General Motors to abandon its Detroit headquarters, a new book by a former top auto adviser reveals....
Rattner acknowledged that Detroit's automakers weren't entirely to blame.
"I would discover that the struggles of GM and Chrysler were as much a failure of management as a consequence of globalization, oil prices, and organized labor," he writes.
"The auto rescue remains one of the few actions taken by the administration that, at least in my opinion, can be pronounced an unambiguous success.
"Detroit should count itself lucky."
[[This preceded the Fouts reaction.)
Wagoner's payout an issue
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The president, Rattner says, was concerned by the decision to allow ousted GM CEO Rick Wagoner to collect $7.1 million of the $22.1 million he was owed in accrued pension benefits.
Wagoner was dismissed from GM in March 2009.
"I could see the president's jaw muscles tighten," Rattner recalled.
Obama had difficulty with the "notion of writing a check that was about 100 times the annual income of a GM worker to the CEO who had brought the company down."
The president, he said, "grimaced and reluctantly acquiesced. I found it striking that the president of the United States had spent more time on an issue of executive pay than on the question of whether to dismiss a major CEO in the first place."
Finally. A reaction against the perpetually-growing executive/worker pay ratio by someone with muscle in this country. But he acquiesced? Not enough muscle? :confused: