Wagoner out, bank CEOs safe - huh?!

[nonconformist]

Apparently, if you're the CEO of an auto firm, you may have to sacrifice yourself to get another bailout. But many bank CEOs have held onto their jobs.

By Paul R. La Monica, CNNMoney.com editor at large
Last Updated: March 30, 2009: 1:16 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Let's get this straight. If you are a CEO of a bank that's losing gobs of money, the government will bail you out repeatedly and let you keep your job.

But if you're Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), you are forced to fall on your sword, or piston as the case may be. And that's after you have had to spend months trying to prove that you have a viable business plan.

<snip>

All it takes is for the stocks of big banks like Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) to plunge to multi-year lows for the government to come running. Citi and BofA have each received $45 billion in assistance and hundreds of billions of dollars more in loan guarantees.
Talkback: Should the government force CEOs of bailed out banks to resign?

Then there's the vortex known as AIG (AIG, Fortune 500). It has needed to be bailed out four times since September and has sucked more than $180 billion out of federal coffers in the process.

GM and privately held Chrysler, on the other hand, have had to jump through several hoops just to get $17.4 billion in loans.

MORE... http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/30/markets/thebuzz/index.htm

[ecstatic]

1. Wagoner will be OK. He is a mega-millionaire!

Don't cry for him because he sure as hell doesn't give a flying f*ck about you! By the way, the others should be fired as well and they might be soon.

[AndyA]

2. President Obama needs to explain this one.

There's definitely a []b]double standard there, and there shouldn't be.

He's losing a lot of credibility with me until he comes clean on this. It doesn't pass the sniff test, not at all.

[OregonBlue]

3. Wagoner has been a disaster. He needed to go. Smug, clueless. Hope the bank CEO's are next!!!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Many bank CEOs are already out.

But it's a false dichotomy.

Wagoner was just another wall street hack, like the bank CEOs.

He didn't give a shit about the workers, the cars, or the customers, just the investors. The effort to portray him as anything less has been dispicable. And under his "leadership" GM's hemorrhaged billions, and well before the latest economic crisis.

[amborin]

12. the true picture is way more nuanced than that....

truth is: outing wagoner is all about forcing union concessions

[rcrush]

5. The Bank CEO's should do more than resign

They should do some time. They knew what they were doing and didnt give a shit about the people they were screwing over. But it'll never happen.

[MarjorieG]

6. Liddy in charge of AIU now for $1; we're incremental on banks, as we've been with auto mfgrs., for y

[Oregone]

7. What I think is that GM is the lamb they are throwing to the wolves to ease populist outrage

They care less about GM than the bankers, so its a fair act to them. The government gets to pretend they are ordering it around (when a lot of this stuff may of been in the works) and the disgruntled get to become happy the government is getting tough. Meanwhile, funds will continue to trickle at another time.

[amborin]

13. agreed

[backscatter712]

8. IIRC, AIG's CEO was also replaced...

though that happened in late 2008 (I think).

Did someone mention that Senator Obama may have had a hand in that? I'm probably wrong on this.

[vicman]

11. This Daily Kos post

points in the right direction. There HAVE been CEO's losing their jobs, including that ass from Merrill Lynch who was trying to run BoA into the ground. Some of the firings were done by the banks themselves after the CEO criminality became too egregious to bear, yet some were done at the feds insistence.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/30/714574/-Flashback:-AIG,-Fannie-Freddie-CEOs-resign-as-conditions-of-bailout

[high density]

9. CNN can hire Wagoner now if he's that great.

CNN is comparing apples and oranges.

[nonconformist]

10. I don't think it's that Wagoner is great - it's the double standard

They're handing over hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks, and in the meantime they're forcing GM to jump through hoops for 17 billion.

[malaise]

14. Not for long

Every journey begins with a first step.