I hear you there. I grew up in a town where almost everyone aspired to work for the local chemical company(including myself). I eventually was hired on there and figured it had to be better than all the other crappy jobs I had ever had. They are a fortune 500 company for goodness sakes, they must know something that other companies don’t know, right?! I was quickly disgusted by the base political decisions and poor management that happened. I was pretty naive to think that just because they were successful that it was because they were better/smarter than everyone else! Now that I’ve been in the working world for 10 more years since working there, I realize that no company is exempt from that kind of decision making.

I think Bush did the right thing by getting the car companies through the holiday season, but right now it is time to restructure and come out on top. I still think GM can become a world leader after this… I mean look at Disney, the dude also filled for bankruptcy, had his original mouse taken away and he created what is now one of the biggest companies in the world.

Car companies in general have issues, and the other big American company which I actually did not get to do any projects for (but was in the process to get ready to do so) was a lot more strict on how they did their business and seemed to have cleaned up the act during the 90s quite a bit. I am glad they refused the money and hopefully they will come out on top as well.

I suspect that our unwillingness to allow poor management to be punished by failure will come back to haunt us in the future.