This is a fascinating post on GM's troubles, and it's highly plausible. Rather than greedy unions or stupid current management, what emerges is a picture of short-sighted leadership from long ago trying to make GM appear more profitable at the time, and later executives not being able to stop the slide under excessive retirement payouts--excessive, at least, compared to the company's ability to pay them. The problem with GM isn't really a problem about unions or executives so much as a fundamental problem with capitalism, which is that it's overly obsessed with the present over the future. Come to think of it, that's the problem with politics as well, and then there's the credit crunch, in which too many people bought too much and weren't able to afford it, and let's not forget the banks that decided that huge quarterly profit statements were more desirable than prudent risks.
It's beginning to look like GM's problems are human problems, or at least American problems. It is to some degree reassuring that this corporation screws up the way the rest of us did. And it looks as though it's going to cost them dearly.
