Jed Lewison, writing at Daily Kos, observes that GM’s Rick Wagoner isn’t the only CEO at a bailed-out company to be asked to step down by the government — a counterpoint to the double-standard question raised today by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), and numerous media outlets (including TPMDC).
It’s true that the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve asked Robert Willumstad to resign after three months in AIG’s top spot, and that Fannie and Freddie’s CEOs were also asked to resign last year.
Here’s where those cases diverge from GM: the government controlled the majority of AIG when it ousted Willumstad and had already placed Fannie and Freddie directly into conservatorship when it booted their CEOs. The government also has become a leading shareholder at Bank of America and Citigroup, while taking the discrete step of lending money to GM … while planning on showing the door to upwards of half of GM’s board in the coming days.
None of this is intended to take a side in the double-standard debate that TPM readers have dismissed as a false equivalency — merely to observe that it would be equally false to compare the circumstances behind Wagoner’s resignation to those behind the AIG and Fannie-Freddie departures.
