Academic

In the midst of its fight for bailout $$, GM is very publicly putting on the hair shirt.  In an ad in a widely read trade journal, GM admits it has "disappointed" consumers:

At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs became lackluster.

We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on the core U.S. market.

We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs.

Wow.  Is this an invitation for a shareholder suit?  At the same time, GM stated that CEO Rick Wagoner has the support of GM's board.  Hmmm. 

In other news, the UAW is negotiating for a seat on GM's board (see here, too) in exchange for further labor concessions, reminiscent of the '79 Chrysler bailout when the then-UAW president was appointed to Chrysler's board.  Such a governance structure of course would move GM a bit closer to the German public company model, which has a two-tier board structure and reserves half the supervisory board seats for employee representatives.  We live in interesting times.