C'mon. I think there's a huge difference between those with finance expertise needed at the head of wall street firms--especially as most of them were not at the helm during the fall, as Josh pointed out--versus the head of an auto company where basic management skills are fairly transferrable (and, he's been part of the problem).

Michigan's politicians love the CEO b/c of contributions. Wagoner obviously hasn't made much headway in negotiations with the unions or creditors, or in reorganizing the company for the 21st Century.

I think I could've set a watch to seeing this headline appearing on TPM today, after I saw the same thing on Huffington Post last night and realized that the "double standard" theme would be the message of the day. And in this case, the double standard is "haunting" us. Oh my!

I don't know much about McCotter, but I'm struggling to understand why the news cycle, especially on the blogosphere, took its first cues from a Michigan Republican. I'm also puzzling why the outpouring of sympathy for Mr. Wagoner didn't come when the Big 3 were taken to the woodshed in front of Congress earlier this year. Could it be that the AIG fiasco has just frayed all our wiring?

I'm still waiting for a more detailed analysis of the merits of the auto plan today, coupled with a few more months of hindsight into how the banking plan is working.

I think the issue is that Chuck Todd is the only person in the media to report that Wagoner is the 4th bailed out CEO to be ousted during this recession, the other 3 were all financial industry "Wall Street" types including the head of AIG (deservingly). While there may indeed be a double standard, none of this "reporting" is accurate or detailed enough to really speak to the issue it's all knee jerk stuff and I think thats what people are upset about.

Merger of Finance Capital + Political Class = Dictatorship of the Looting Class

Definition: Looting class, noun

An aristocracy of wealth and privilege, usually inherited. Seeks to preserve and enhance its relative status by reducing its taxes, both income and inheritance. Does so by increasing the relative tax burden on the working class while reducing the commodity price of labor as near to zero as possible, often by exporting jobs to areas of even cheaper labor. Assumes that labor is a commodity input, the chief purpose of which is to help maximize speculative profits accruing to the looting class.

The core leadership and funding for this class are provided by the looting trinity of Big Guns, Big Oil, and Big Pharma (G.O.P.), with key coordination and enabling provided by Big Banking, i.e., by finance capital.

Big Banking receives its greatest returns by constructing paper Ponzi pyramids of derivatives (such as collatoralized debt obligations packaging sub-prime mortgages or Big Casino bets on numbers and trends, i.e., naked credit default swaps) based on astronomical, unregulated leverage ratios. Bernie Madoff's Ponzi empire is not an aberration; it is merely a subset of the larger national and world Ponzi economy of finance.

Labor, regarded as a mere commodity, is thought by the looting class to have no right to non-monetary benefits, such as health care, occupational or environmental safety, or reasonable amounts of leisure time. (If workers are permitted reasonable working hours and ample leisure and vacation time, they may find time to educate themselves and organize, rather than sit exhausted in the evenings in front a TV to watch the diversions and distractions provided by corporate media conglomerates, which of course are controlled by the looting class.) Such non-monetary benefits might reduce net profits.

The looting class seeks to preserve a system in which the workers are encouraged and even compelled to carry a huge burden of personal debt. The carefully instilled fear of losing one's job and facing bankruptcy helps to promote a docile work force disinterested in organizing to bargain collectively with the looters. Ever since the Reagan Administration crushed the Professional Air Traffic Controllers, the looting class has waged a full-scale, generation-long, remarkably successful assault on the working class as represented by organized labor.

Government itself is purchased and manipulated by the looting class as a vehicle for promoting the looting class's particular interests, and the concept that government should promote the "greatest good for the greatest number" is utterly alien to the looter.

The ultimate goal of the looting class is to create a one-party state immune to political or financial challenge. In such a state the Corporatist Party may have more than one wing, such as a Republican Wing and a Democratic Wing or a Tory Wing and a Labour Wing, but the looting class seeks to ensure that its essential interests are fully preserved no matter which wing officially wields political power.

The key precept of the looting class is the Corporate Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. Profits are privatized, minimally taxed, and passed on to heirs. Losses are socialized and publicly funded. The looting class is relieved of all financial and moral risk. Risk (i.e., covering the looting class's bets on exotic financial instruments tenuously connected or even utterly unconnected to the real economy of goods and services) is transferred to the working and middle classes, which are taxed as necessary to cover the looting class's misjudgments and gambling losses.

Now is a wonderful time to be a member of the looting class--especially the American looting class--maybe the best time in human history.

And here is the looting class's key slogan:

Privatize all of our profits! Socialize all of our losses!

Doubling down on stupid...Come on people. If Johnny financially screwed up the country...
GM's CEO deserves to be fired! And so does the head of most financial institutions as well. We could do without most of the current members of Congress, while we are at it. We need fresh blood across the board!

The "double standard" haunting the Administration?

As nearly every other commenter has pointed out, this is misleading. And I don't get the sudden love for Waggoner. He's been around for years, years during which it was painfully obvious that Detroit was sinking into oblivion. But now he's a sympathetic figure?

How about reporting about the role that many elected figures from Michigan played in propping up dysfunctional Detroit? Or are we just going to get the series of quotes about poor Mr. Waggoner?

I love the coastal "Pro-Labor" liberals missing no opportunity to crap on the UAW. You're right, we do deserve to live like dogs because it's not 1950.

The headline on TPM is correct. The management of all of these firms - auto and banking alike - should've been removed months ago. Most of the Wall St gang should be up on charges, if not in chains.

Obama remains cowed to Wall Street, unwilling to confront them as the crooks and thieves they are.

Surely the sins of the auto industry pale when compared to those of Wall Street but Detroit is a much easier target for Washington's weak tinklers. The double standard is alive and well.

The difference between Wall Street and the auto companies is that the geniuses on Wall Street are the ones responsible for the dramatic drop in car sales - not the other way around. Even companies like Toyota are reporting their first losses in 70 years. So why not fire them too?

What makes this so disturbing is the reason that it was done: because they didn't want to fire more workers and slash their pay to imitate non-unionized auto workers. This is another stop backwards for American workers.

Obama seems to have adopted Wall Street's view, which holds that all problems are ultimately traceable to worker's refusal to cut their wages and benefits so that Wall Street can enjoy a larger share of the economic pie. He seems oblivious to the fact that this view - that all economic problems must be solved by cutting jobs and wages - is the problem, not the solution.

I agree that the headline shrill and way too simplistic. Wagoner presided over the long-term denial of reality and decline of GM. Also, to move forward, a unions and bondholders must make major concessions, and Wagoner clearly wasn't getting very far with that despite considerable pressure.

Is that a double standard vis a vis banking CEO's? Wrong question - to think of a "standard" of firing CEO's is just stupid...each case must be evaluated on its own.

Another thing that some people seem to overlook is exactly who helped Obama in his campaign for president and who didn't.

Though the United Auto Workers didn't officially endorse a candidate - even when Obama seemed to have the nomination wrapped up - the UAW was always very close to Hillary and she carried Michigan, much to the consternation of the Obama camp.

OTOH, the crooks on Wall Street were some of his largest contributors:

Goldman Sachs: $955,473

Citigroup: $653,468

JP Morgan Chase & Co.: $646,058

Morgan Stanley: $485,823

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

In politics, it isn't what you know but what have you done for me.

Elana, I do not have time to read all the comments, but surely someone has pointed out to you that there is along list of fired, dismissed, and resigned CEO's on Wall Street and in the Banking industry as result of the financial debacle. What about, for example, the resignation of the CEO's of AIG, and of FannieMae-FreddieMac? Then there other people like the CEO of Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, and so on. The list is actually pretty long. In future I suggest you tell the whole story. Your critique may still hold, but be be based on reality instead of a version of same.

I have to wonder how much of this has been driven by Wall Street because of shrinking margins in the auto sector which translates to weak stock performance. Detroit has been trying like hell to compete but the deck was stacked against them.

The fact is Detroit has taken care of their own for a very long time and that was inclusive of the workers. Wall Street was the driving force that changed that equation. Not Detroit. Right now I suspect a lot of people would rather have a funded retirement than a 401K that has gone to hell. There was nothing inherently wrong with how Detroit did things. It just didn't set well with the Wall Street view of the world. Everyone knows you can't raise a family on $13 / hr but that is the ball park amount Wall Street has targeted as an hourly rate. With zero benefits. And all workers will be expected to fund their own retirement with a 401K that is continually at risk from Wall Street predators. I find it hard to fathom that some might think the system that has evolved is better that what we once had. I couldn't disagree more.

For some reason, people seem to get much more emotional about the automakers than they do about the financial industry. The vitriol surprises me sometimes. A lot of people actually seem to WANT the US automakers to fail and would be disappointed to see them survive.

Mitch Albom has a good take on this topic in Sports Illustrated: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/the_bonus/01/07/detroit/

True, people are also mad at the banks, hedge funds, etc., but their anger seems to be more abstract and vauge. Perhaps that is because these are abstract and vague companies, while automakers are companies we physically come in contact with every day.

I teach at a university in Michigan, and I know many students whose parents have lost their jobs or will shortly lose their jobs. One of my 18-year-old students recently told me that his dad, who has worked at GM for 30 years, could have taken a buyout a few years ago but decided to stay on the job until his two sons had finished college. This is a good kid, who has done nothing to cause the financial crisis. I assume, from what he has told me, that his dad has worked hard all his life and just wants to retire with dignity and help his sons go to college.

I'm not saying that cutbacks aren't necessary, among workers and among bondholders (and I have no problem with Rick Wagoner or Nardelli being fired). Maybe my student's father needs to live with a smaller retirement. But to just throw this guy and his family away, like they're nothing seems wrong to me. I know I'm going to hear people saying, "Things are rough all over. Get used to it." And it's true, things are rough all over, but I think we need to keep the human factor in all of this in mind.

When the financial companies are receiving TRILLIONS of dollars compared to 30 billion for the auto industry, you have to step back and ask why there is so much anger directed at the auto industry. Yes, the CEOs have done some really stupid things (as I said before -- Hummers, SUVs, etc.) while also doing a few good things (Ford Escape Hybrid, Chevvy Volt). Maybe the US auto workers' wages were (and I emphasize the past tense) higher than those working in non-union, foreign plants in the US. But the workers like my student's father aren't the ones who wrecked the world economy. That was the geniuses at places like AIG and Citigroup.

The banking system is the lifeblood of our economy. The auto industry is an important limb, but one that we can afford to amputate without killing the patient.

Old story in this country: banks rule!

Wall Street execs have been fired - Prince at Citi, O'Neil then Thain at Merril Lynch, Cayne at Bear Sterns, Sullivan and Willumstad at AIG, Killinger at WAMU -I'm sure there were others too. Surely, some of these low lifes deserve to burn in hell for what they did, but that's another subject.

Waggoner deserved to be canned a long time ago. He's been a senior exec throughout the long demise of GM. I ain't too smart, but it has been pretty plain to me since the seventies that there would be a market for fuel efficiency. How many gas crises did these morons go through and they still didn't learn? Waggoner deserved it, as did the Wall Street types, but saying the latter haven't been fired just ain't so. They weren't fired by the Prez, because even their dumb ass boards had the sense to can them when things went south. Now that's a story worth writing a column about - why didn't the GM Board fire Waggoner?

Wagoner has had this coming for a long, long time. GM has been out-classed by foreign car companies for years. Foreign companies have been more efficient, and made better products than U.S. car companies. GM does not deserve the same kind of bailout, and Wagoner is a big reason for GM's struggles.