[Mon. a.m. Updates] Rick Wagoner: Slaughtered As a Triumphant Obama Holds Rick’s Head High

With auto company bailouts highly unpopular with the citizenry, President Barack Obama, who will speak later Monday, felt compelled to shake things up. To be blunt, as Allahpundit puts it, “If you want taxpayer money, you’re going to have to do things The One’s way.”

The WSJ reports that GM’s Rick Wagoner and Fritz Henderson were summoned to D.C. on Friday, to the Treasury office of Steven Rattner, selected by PBO last month to head the Department’s auto-industry task force. Mr. Rattner “broke the news to Mr. Wagoner in person at his office at Treasury,” and then met with the temporary replacement, Mr. Henderson. Bloomberg confirms the Friday meetings in “GM’s Wagoner Steps Aside After Failing Obama Scrutiny.”

Below: Who knew about the Friday beheading — that bloody coup d’état! — before the story broke Sunday night? Who didn’t know? …

Surely seven people (and staff) knew Friday but, as with the leak-free message control during Obama’s campaign, nobody spilled the beans. Who knew? GM’s Wagoner and Henderson, Treasury’s Geithner and Rattner, the WH’s Obama, Emanuel, and perhaps Axelrod. Who was left in the dark until Sunday night? Michigan’s senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow? Michigan’s once-powerful House member John Dingell? (Dingell recently got kicked upstairs by Nancy Pelosi.) The 11th District’s Thad McCotter? (McCotter spoke Sunday night with John Batchelor and guests, including Larry Johnson, but was constrained by “embargoed” news.)

In fact, Obama didn’t tell four key Congressional members (Levin, Stabenow, Dingell and Sander Levin) until “a Sunday night conference call that he would grant unspecified additional aid to GM for 60 days and Chrysler for 30 days, according to a person familiar with the call,” reports the Detroit News.

Once again, the Unitary Executive Obama has circumvented the will of the people which is supposed to be expressed through their representatives and senators to Congress, as quaintly prescribed in the Constitution by our nation’s brilliant founders.

This is akin to Geithner’s “toxic assets plan,” announced Monday and issued by fiat. To which you might reply, “Well, he is the Treasury secretary.” And to which I’d retort, “But he sneakily is going to blow at least $1 trillion of your taxes, without having undergone (1) Congressional scrutiny and hearings; and (2) any legislation granting him such authority.

This Bloomberg paragraph explains in part why Rick Wagoner was forced out:

“It’s very hard for the government to write a big check without giving some evidence of change,” Casesa said. “This will also give the government moral authority with the other stakeholders to make them sacrifice.”

The WSJ goes further:

The Obama administration used the threat of withholding more bailout money to force out General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, marking one of the most dramatic government interventions in private industry since the economic crisis began last year. [...]

[NOTE THIS, readers.] The move also indicates that the Treasury Department [GEITHNER] intends to wade more deeply than most observers expected into the affairs of the country’s largest and oldest car company.

So, Obama forced the chairman of a major private company to resign. (Some news is “embargoed” until midnight ET. We will update.) Geithner? He knew this morning — of COURSE he knew (see WSJ quotes above and below) but held it during Meet the Press and Gregory, unlike Russert, has no nose for blood in the water. By the way, I never thought I’d cry out for Tim Russert, but, damn, was he needed as David Gregory played softball with Geithner, who’s obviously graduated from a quickie two-week master’s degree in Media Management from David Axelrod. For example, the back-and-forth on the toxic assets plan was as placid as a lullaby duet.

Update: Hot Air‘s Allahpundit adds another dimension:

If you want taxpayer money, you’re going to have to do things The One’s way. And if you don’t want taxpayer money, TurboTax Tim might swoop in and make sure you do things The One’s way anyway. [...]

Oddly enough, when Rasmussen polled the public in December, only 14 percent thought a GM run by the feds would outperform a GM run by the private sector. Exit question: Ever get the feeling that Obama’s not quite the centrist pragmatist Christopher Buckley thought he’d be? (Emphases mine.)

(Susan’s Note about the conservative Christopher Buckley’s public support of Obama: This is a depressing instance of the unintended consequence of voting based primarily on compensatory white guilt.)

There are more news flashes via Memeorandum from major news outlets. Here’s more Bloomberg:

“General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner will step down after more than eight years running the largest U.S. automaker, people familiar with the situation said.

“The Obama administration asked Wagoner, 56, to leave the company and he agreed, said an administration official who declined to be identified before the move was announced. The likely replacement, unless the government hires from outside the company, would be Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson, said John Casesa, managing partner at New York-based consulting firm Casesa Shapiro Group.”

And here’s more WSJ:

An administration official confirmed that Mr. Wagoner was asked to step down to make way for ongoing restructuring within the company. Mr. Wagoner will be replaced, at least on an interim basis, by Frederick “Fritz” Henderson, the company’s chief operating officer.

Mr. Wagoner was asked to step down on Friday by Steven Rattner, the investment banker picked last month by the the administration to lead the Treasury Department’s auto-industry task force. Mr. Rattner broke the news to Mr. Wagoner in person at his office at Treasury, according to an administration official. Afterward, Mr. Rattner met one-on-one with Mr. Henderson, who will fill in as GM’s CEO.

GM didn’t immediately return calls for comment. One longtime GM board member, Kent Kresa, declined to comment when reached by phone Sunday night.

The ouster comes as President Barack Obama prepares to give billions of dollars more in aid to struggling auto makers GM and Chrysler LLC, but only if all sides—including unions and bondholders—show that they are ready to sacrifice.

President Obama plans Monday to lay out the administration’s interim conclusions on the companies’ viability and the many steps that need to be taken to return the companies to health. The president is likely to hold off on granting the companies $21.6 billion in new loans to preserve leverage in negotiations, particularly with the thousands of bondholders who hold a total of about $28 billion in GM debt.

In remarks Sunday, Mr. Obama said that he intends to extract “a set of sacrifices from all parties involved—management, labor, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, dealers.” The industry, he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” must “take serious restructuring steps now in order to preserve a brighter future down the road.” The two companies “are not there yet,” he added.

Mr. Wagoner’s removal shows that the sacrifices could cut deep. The departure of the company’s top executive promises to further shake up a company that has already been through considerable change over the past six months. The 56-year-old executive had been scrambling to craft a global strategy aimed at maintaining leadership in the global sales chase with Toyota Motor Corp., and making big profits in emerging markets. … Read all.

Adds Bloomberg in “GM’s Wagoner Steps Aside After Failing Obama Scrutiny “:

[...]

Wagoner became a symbol of the failing U.S. auto industry in recent months after flying to Washington via corporate jet to ask for aid. Since taking over in 2000, he presided over $82 billion in losses during the past four years and yielded GM’s title as the world’s top-selling carmaker to Toyota Motor Corp.

His exit caps an unsuccessful five-month push to win U.S. aid without losing his job. Forced to work for $1 a year and cede most of his corporate perks, he had said he wouldn’t resign unless compelled. On March 27, 129 days after Congress’s first hearing on the future of GM, he got that call.

[...]

“On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with administration officials,” Wagoner said in a statement. “In the course of that meeting, they requested that I ‘step aside’ as CEO of GM, and so I have.”

Henderson, 49, was tapped by Wagoner to become COO a year ago after serving as chief financial officer. He previously ran GM’s operations in Asia and Europe.

Obama will outline his ideas for GM at a briefing later today, giving the biggest U.S. automaker 60 days to devise a plan that cuts deeper and makes more changes.

“The bailout loans aren’t hugely popular and that’s creating an issue for Obama,” said Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California, which tracks vehicle pricing and consumer behavior. “One way to make the loans more palatable is to be able to say the person responsible is no longer with GM.”

GM had said it will shed 47,000 jobs globally in 2009 and plans to close five assembly plants. Executives said the Detroit-based automaker will focus on four U.S. brands, down from eight, and eliminate thousands of dealers.

Rescue Plan

Wagoner oversaw those plans to meet the terms of the rescue unveiled on Dec. 19 by then-President George W. Bush, after Congress balked at a bailout for GM and Chrysler LLC. CEO Robert Nardelli will stay at Chrysler and must complete a planned alliance with Fiat SpA within 30 days, an Obama administration official said.

Obama’s task force pointed to GM’s failure to win concessions from bondholders, a step needed to cut the automaker’s debt and ensure future viability, as one reason the government needed a new plan.

GM’s latest debt exchange offer, made March 24, wasn’t likely to win bondholders’ approval because it’s less lucrative than the terms the U.S. required for the company to keep the first $13.4 billion in loans, a person briefed on the talks said. The bondholders didn’t seek Wagoner’s dismissal, the person said.

The government will push for even deeper cuts in debt now, the administration official said.

Tumbling Shares, Bonds

GM tumbled 87 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading last year, the most among the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The shares gained 21 cents, or 6.2 percent, to $3.21 on March 27, extending a 66 percent rally since GM said March 12 that it wouldn’t need a $2 billion payment by tomorrow to survive as originally forecast. ….

Postscript #1: John Batchelor discussed the firing of Wagoner Sunday night with Larry Johnson on his nationally syndicated radio show via Los Angeles’s KFI-AM (podcast up ASAP). The scheduled topic was the White House meeting with the nation’s top bankers, but the agile Mr. Batchelor leaped on the breaking news about GM’s Rick Wagoner, and plumbed his guests for their reactions, as well as netting Rep. Thad McCotter as a special guest.

Postscript #2: Here is an earlier NoQuarterUSA post that featured McCotter’s floor speech earlier this month. Larry Doyle’s wife discovered it, and e-mailed me the video link. Here’s that video:

Here is his House site URL: Thad McCotter

Mon. A.M. Update / Postscript #3: CALL and e-mail your Senators and your House, and DEMAND CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT AND THE RIGHT TO HAVE LEGISLATION so that Tiny Tim cannot RULE this country by fiat.

Who knew we’d ever be calling up our members of Congress and demanding they craft legislation?

But, unless we do, we might as well think of PBO as Hugo Chavez and/or Fidel Castro with his brother Tiny Tim Raoul Castro.

THIS BLOG’s header says it all:

Isn’t it amusing. The left kicked and screamed about Bush/Cheney’s “unitary executive” for years! Will they hold PBO to the same standards?

FYI: Guess which Democratic primary candidate told the Boston Globe that one of the first things to take care of was to rescind Bush’s unitary executive signings. Can’t guess?

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Hillary Clinton.

PBO has expanded Bush’s power.

See NoQuarterUSA’s previous stories on the unitary executive signing statements issued by Bush — and now being employed by a small cabel in the White House and Treasury department.