GM's a Good Start But More Heads Must Roll

At last, the CEO of a bailed-out company feels the pain of job loss

Oh hey look at this! The CEO of a failing company that enjoyed government billions while continuing to fail has, miraculously, been fired. Er, he has "resigned."

The CEO in question is GM's Rick Wagoner, who had to resign if his company was going to get any more bailout money.

This is welcome news for millions of Americans, who have sat around their dinner tables and television sets for months wondering how the people who led enormous companies off a financial cliff have been allowed to stay at the helm of those companies while regular people get fired for far more minor offenses.

To date, the government has been pretty timid about demanding CEO resignations. They installed Ed Liddy to replace Robert Willumstad at AIG back in September, but that's been about it. Executive staff at bailed-out companies has stayed remarkably stable even as those companies teeter on the edge of insolvency. The Wagoner resignation marks the first time the government has actively stepped in with an automaker and demanded that part of their "restructuring" involve the replacement of the executive who presided over his company's collapse.

Now wouldn't it be nice if the massive failing banks accepting hundreds of billions of federal dollars were to look at the Wagoner case and, either out of a sense of the inevitable or simple human shame, replace the CEOs and executive boards who remain mysteriously in place? It would be wonderful, but don't bet on anything changing until those banks come to Congress again, maybe later this year, asking for yet another infusion of cash.

Maybe by then Congress and the Administration will have figured out that failing institutions -- whether they're banks or insurance giants or car makers -- can't be trusted to govern themselves responsibly. Even such simple and intuitive notions as replacing the CEOs and corporate boards who failed to prevent their companies' implosion must be spelled out and made a condition of more cash. May Rick Wagoner be the first of many.

Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.

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