The World According to Warren

Warren Brown is nothing if not ambitious in his defense of the indefensible (i.e. GM CEO Rick Wagoner). Rather than just raise a[nother] cheer for the man who’s spent the last decade-plus jamming the yoke forward on General Motors’ inexorable descent into bankruptcy, the Washington Post carmudgeon decided to rewrite the entire history of the Japanese “invasion” of the American automotive market. But before he does that, Warren upbraids those who’ve called for Toyota Prez Katsuaki Watanabe to resign, suggesting that Watanabe and Wagoner are birds of a feather, getting flocked together. “GM, as we all know, has lost substantially more than $1.7 billion. In fact, it has lost $72.3 billion since 2004 under Wagoner’s reign. By that measurement, applying Fire the Coach rules, Wagoner is 40 times more deserving of dismissal than Watanabe. But here’s arguing that all of that is sloppy logic and in many ways inherently unfair. Here’s also suggesting that Fire the Coach management will solve nothing — or remedy very little — in an arena where game policy is athwart common sense, as it is and has been in a United States absent effective industrial and energy policies.” Same old you-know-what, different wrapper. Brown is once again, blaming everyone BUT Wagoner for GM’s chronic, shameful self-destruction.

“Historically, the playing field in the United States has been saturated with cheap gasoline. Domestic teams taking that field usually did so with big wheels, big horsepower and a seemingly insatiable thirst for fuel. Consumers went mad for those teams. The automotive media, including yours truly, egged everyone on, declaring the only good horsepower as more horsepower. A few nanny-nanny-boo-boo types objected. But politicians and regulators by and large went with the crowd — that is, the votes.”

Bottom line: we’re all guilty (except you-know-who). In fact, it’s a good thing no one dropped a cigarette butt on that gasoline-soaked field. But I digress. No wait; Warren’s got that covered. So let’s skip ahead to the current “difficulties,” brought to you by those evil money men.

“Finally, the game changed horribly. It turned out that its financing was phony, or, at least not as legitimate or as solid as it had been reputed to be. The finance and big insurance companies that controlled the cash were shaky. Credit tightened and squeezed the life out of the automobile consumer market, and not even mighty Toyota could escape that pain.”

Is there an emoticon for a sneer? Meanwhile, Warren dares to trot-out the “m” word for Red Ink Rick.

“Wagoner has done a marvelous job of returning a long-declining GM to global admiration in terms of product design, quality and reliability. It is extremely difficult to turn a profit in that kind of extremely expensive turnaround. It is next to impossible to do it in a globally collapsed credit market.

Neither executive should be dismissed. Both men should retain their positions and be allowed to fight it out until the final whistle blows — under industrial, energy and financial policies that make better sense for all of us.”

Oy vey.