Ed Whitacre Anoints Himself GM CEO

You certainly can't fault Ed Whitacre for lacking chutzpah, can you?

On this basis,

"I like the people, I made some management changes and I just felt comfortable with the team,"

Whitacre decided he will be GM's long term CEO. Never mind the board- it's been a useless rubber stamp for decades. Whitacre was appointed by the current administration, so any notionally publicly-held company would be asking for a fight with the thugs in Washington if they were to contest the federal government's wishes.

After all, consider AIG's fate.

So Whitacre crowned himself king of GM.

Unfortunately, Whitacre's experience has been in a sector more or less defined by government intervention- telecommunications. Sure, he cobbled together SBC, now named ATT, from the remnants of various Bell System operating companies and, finally, the remains of the one-time parent company. But as I noted in an earlier post, the most important task in that sector was managing the regulatory environment, and perhaps cost-cutting.

GM needs an entirely different set of skills in its CEO. To sanction Whitacre's self-promotion to CEO is to admit that GM will continue to be a ward of the US taxpayer. The new CEO's most prominent management changes were to bring in two old regulatory affairs specialists who worked for him at SBC.

Does that tell you something? It ought to.

Whitacre sees GM's most important task as managing Washington. Beyond that, I don't think Ed Whitacre has any idea how to run a competitive company, the business of which is to sell big ticket products to consumers.

Anybody stupid enough to still be a voluntary GM shareholder deserves what happens next.

Oh, right. That would be mostly union members, wouldn't it?