The chief executive of the struggling US car company, General Motors - Rick Wagoner - has agreed to step down.
He will leave his post immediately at the request of President Barack Obama's administration, a senior official confirmed to the BBC.
The news comes as the president prepares to announce new plans to help GM and fellow car giant, Chrysler.
The two car manufacturers have already received $17.4bn (£14.4bn) in support, and are seeking as much as again.
GM plans to axe 47,000 jobs and Chrysler 3,000, as well as shedding a number of car models.
The job cuts would take place by the end of 2009 and are the largest work force reduction announced by a by a US firm in the current downturn.
Mr Wagoner, 56, has headed GM for almost six years, after first joining the company in 1977.
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I gotta say, though, this is awesome. I don't much care about one executive, but if its indicative of a future pattern of accountability, I'm all for it.
If by "step down" you mean "fail to win reelection," yes.
This is one reason why we have term limits. Executives don't traditionally have term limits.
Yup. In 2013.
really?
really?
If GM hadn't taken bailout money, this would be socialism.
Otherwise, GM's CEO could have told Obama to go fuck himself.
If the country goes into Receivership I would expect as much.
I don't think Chrysler's management is out of the woods.
And if mud were actually ice cream my backyard would be delicious.
And if everyone grew lawns on the roofs of their houses we could save a lot of energy.
I actually pictured that on skyscrapers and tall buildings. Houses, not so much.
That would be pretty sweet. How much money do we need to give out in tax dollars to make this happen?
None. You contract actual private companies to construct them.
Compelling concept, I know.
These CEO's fucked up, if he fucks up should he not follow his own advice?
Oh well, lets watch and see what happens.
If in fact the American people think he fucked up they will kick him out of office in four years, yes.
are you seriously saying that a top executive of a private company is the same thing as a president elected by the people of this country to serve in the government's top executive position
Do you just not understand the basic concept of our system of government or do you just like being overtly antagonistic?
I know that it can be really hard to tell nowadays, but corporations and government are actually different. Shocking.
Also you're acting like it's unprecedented for a president to resign.
what point would that be
could it possibly be the point where the american people vote him out
That's true. I didn't look at it that way before.
Given that things started out Very Bad, at what point would you say a forced resignation is in order? As has been pointed out, resignations in the presidency are not unheard of.
This is the first CEO who was requested to step down though. And compared to some of the other companies receiving bailout money, GM is getting peanuts.
Don't get me wrong, this guy was a big part of the problem, and he should go, but you've got to think a bit about what happened here...
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
If he ran the government into the ground so badly that God (or whatever) has to give the country a cash infusion to not go bankrupt, then yes.
Until then your analogy is retarded.
I know we've had this conversation before, but again, do you actually know what the word socialism means?
If GM hadn't taken bailout money they'd be bankrupt, in which case the government coudl tell management to do whatever they felt like, as long as it could be reasonably be expected to help salvage the company.
I don't think socialism means what you think it means anymore.
When China takes partial ownership of the country, rather than just giving us loans, I would expect him to resign from the office, yes.
Could you explain how China or whoever else would be capable of doing such a thing, though, because it doesn't seem possible in any sense of the word unlike the Federal Government bailing out private enterprise and is the only analogous way your posts make any sense.
Probably because some of those CEO's own enough of our government so that they don't have to listen.
But hey one incompetent rich-as-shit scumbag is going to be unemployed for a couple of weeks until he squirms into another high-paying position, so this is a nice start!
Obs, without going to Wikipedia or the dictionary, please define socialism for us.
GM and Chrysler are a mess, but both in terms of the resources they've sucked up and damaged they've done to the larger economy they're orders of magnitude better than almsot any of the major financial firms, yet they've had a harder time of it and been forced to make wildly more concessions than any of those firms. If the boards and executives at places like AIG are still in place three months from now when GM has been forced to renegotiate worker contracts and sack their leadership there's going to be a hell of a backlash and rightly so.
It was a rhetorical question.
You don't know what Socialism means period.
I'll take "Whatever republicans are paid to say it is" for $400 Alex.