{"id":2678,"date":"2008-12-09T01:51:11","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T06:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=2678"},"modified":"2008-12-09T01:51:11","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T06:51:11","slug":"we-live-in-interesting-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2008\/12\/09\/we-live-in-interesting-times\/","title":{"rendered":"we live in interesting times&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"268\" width=\"520\" vspace=\"7\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/gm.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/12\/08\/AR2008120803423.html?hpid=topnews\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Closer to Bailout, GM Prints Candid Apology<\/strong><\/a><br \/>     By Kendra Marr<br \/>      Washington Post Staff Writer <br \/>       Tuesday, December 9, 2008<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"> Step one on the road to recovery: Admit you have a problem. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"> General Motors, the world&#8217;s largest automaker, yesterday candidly confessed to the blunders that has led it to near-collapse in a full-page advertisement in <strong>Automotive News<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">&quot;While we&#8217;re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you,&quot; the company said in the magazine ad. &quot;At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today&#8217;s globally competitive industry&quot;&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Several of the points in their ad above deserve highlighting:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">leading the reinvention of the automobile based on promising new technology<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">meeting appropriate standards for executive pay and corporate governance<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">protecting our environment<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">paying you back the entire loan with appropriate oversight and returns<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">We definitely live in interesting times. I never in my life thought I&#8217;d read such a thing as this ad. And as tempting as it is to see it as a jailhouse conversion, I&#8217;d still rather hear them saying these things than not&hellip;<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"384\" width=\"453\" vspace=\"7\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.mlive.com\/businessnow_impact\/2008\/07\/large_GM_5_MILLIONTH_CAR.jpg\" \/><br \/><sup>GM&#8217;s one millionth car&hellip;<\/sup><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Closer to Bailout, GM Prints Candid Apology By Kendra Marr Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 9, 2008 Step one on the road to recovery: Admit you have a problem. General Motors, the world&#8217;s largest automaker, yesterday candidly confessed to the blunders that has led it to near-collapse in a full-page advertisement in Automotive News. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}