WHERE'S THAT CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN? – AT 8:31 P.M. ET:  Apparently, Government Motors won't be run any differently than General Motors:

NEW YORK (AP) -- General Motors Co. CEO Ed Whitacre will receive a salary of $1.7 million this year, plus stock awards that will bring his total pay package to $9 million at a later date, the automaker said Friday.

On the basis of what?

In a surprise announcement, GM also said former CEO Fritz Henderson has been rehired as a consultant. Henderson, who was forced out of the job in December, will work 20 hours a month and will be paid $59,090 a month, the company said.

The company is laying off thousands, and a man gets almost $60,000 to work 20 hours?  Do they really need him that badly, or did he play golf with the right guy?

This is the kind of thing that discredits the enterprise system.  It's an embarrassment, one of many these days. 

Whitacre's total compensation is larger than Henderson's when he was CEO. Henderson received a total pay package worth nearly $5.5 million.

Whitacre's pay package includes a cash salary of $1.7 million that took effect Jan. 1. It also includes $5.3 million in stock awarded in increments starting in 2012, plus another stock award worth $2 million. The details, including the timing, of the $2 million stock award still need to be worked out, a GM spokeswoman said.

GM is 60 percent owned by the federal government and has received $52 billion in federal aid. The company plans to repay as much of the money as possible by issuing stock to the public, possibly as early as this year.

Wall Street is going back to the same obscene practices that helped lead to the financial crisis.  Apparently, GM wants to do the same.  Their lobbyists in Washington must be doing their jobs very well. 

If free enterprise is destroyed, it won't be because of the efforts of clownish, incompetent socialists, waving around their copies of Howard Zinn's fictional "A People's History..."  It will be because of public revulsion toward indefensible practices.

There used to be a saying that there's room in business for bulls and bears, but not for pigs.  Apparently, plenty of room has been made for the pigs.

February 21, 2010