Rick Wagoner

Declaring that the country had reached the end of the road with Detroit's automakers, President Obama on Monday mapped a new course for bailed-out General Motors Corp. and Chrysler in a series of moves designed to force the hands of workers, creditors and others with a stake in the companies. Obama, using the threat of bankruptcy as a weapon, vowed to transform the U.S.

Amid rising concern about the company's outlook, General Motors Corp. directors took the unusual step of affirming support for Chief Executive Rick Wagoner on Wednesday. The nation's largest automaker has suffered financially as gas prices have soared, sales have plummeted, values of SUVs and trucks have collapsed and consumer confidence has reached record lows. Last week, GM reported a $15.5-billion loss for the second quarter on an 18% revenue slide.

Addressing shareholders at General Motors Corp.'s annual meeting last year, Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner had only grim news. The world's largest automaker had lost $1.1 billion in the first quarter of 2005. Its crucial North American automotive business was losing market share to competitors such as Toyota Motor Corp. and was swamped by staggering healthcare costs for employees and retirees.

A year after facing angry stockholders calling for his head, General Motors Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner left Tuesday's annual meeting with his neck -- and business card -- fully intact. Shareholders soundly defeated a proposal that would have stripped him of one of his two jobs at the troubled automaker. The 79.6% vote against the measure was a strong show of support for a man who this year threatened to quit unless his board publicly backed him.

General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said Tuesday that he planned to keep his job even if the Detroit-based automaker entered a three-way alliance with Nissan Motor Co. and Renault. "I have no intention of leaving my position at GM," he told reporters when asked if he would step down should Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan of Japan and Renault of France, win a GM board seat.

General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner voiced concern Monday over recent leaks of sensitive board information, hinting that investor Kirk Kerkorian's representative, Jerome York, was behind them. Meeting with editors and reporters at the Los Angeles Times, Wagoner was noncommittal about the progress of talks initiated by York last month to explore linking the automaker to an existing alliance of France's Renault and Japan's Nissan Motor Co.

As Rick Wagoner rides off to whatever biz-school sinecure he's destined for, his nine years at the helm of General Motors Corp. will be evaluated in many ways and by many hands. And yet, fairly or not, auto company chief executives are best remembered for the cars produced during their tenure. People still refer to the Cadillac Cimarron as a "Roger Smith" car, and the Ford Mustang will somehow always belong eternally to Lee Iacocca.

By the time Rick Wagoner was named chief executive of General Motors Corp. in June 2000, the stock market seemed to know that the company's fortunes had peaked. GM's shares reached their all-time high of $93.63 in April 2000. By the end of June of that year the price had tumbled to $58.06. The stock has been in decline for most of this decade, even in the bull-market years of 2004, 2005 and 2007. GM's sales were $185 billion in 2000 and reached a record $206 billion in 2006.

By showing General Motors chief Rick Wagoner the door, President Obama is in effect announcing that if the government picks up the tab for a stumbling business, it gets the right to call the shots. The move is as dramatic a reach into the boardroom of an independent American corporation as the government has made in decades, possibly since the '30s.

It's good unemployment, if you can get it. Rick Wagoner, the former General Motors chairman and chief executive who was unseated as part of the automaker's restructuring, will receive millions of dollars in severance pay, a lifetime salary and other lucrative benefits, according to public documents filed Tuesday. Wagoner's package draws fresh attention to the thorny issue of executive compensation at companies receiving taxpayer aid.