Abruptly increasing the intrusiveness of federal oversight, President Obama has basically fired the chairman of General Motors’ board. Populist schadenfreude aside, it is worth wondering whether this is really a good precedent. Blue Crab Boulevard shares this discomfort:
I would not know Rick Wagoner is I tripped over him. But I am very troubled by a government that offers aid, then punishes those who take the offered hand. This is now happening at the executive level, not just the legislative.
So now we have not only the Congress passing bills of attainder to single out and punish people who are in unpopular occupations, but now the President of the United States is going to personally dictate the makeup of corporate boards. Does anyone seriously believe that the replacements will be determined solely by merit? Or might political connections come into it, now that the government is in the hiring and firing process?
It may well be that this firing is completely justified and that it is the first step on some kind of road to GM’s recovery. But if so, how is hard to see. It appears to be just a public relations move in some kind of effort to ride the wave of populist discontent and “bailout fatigue”. And once the government’s fingers are this deep into the economy, it is reasonable to wonder whether economics and finance in the United States might become so politicized as to resemble the kind of warlordism traditionally associated with third-world basket cases.
Or we can just hope this is a one-time aberration.
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Good post Jason