'C' for Crap you could Never make up in a Million Years...Or things

GM's new Chairman acknowledges that he doesn't know anything about the car industry...

Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.

The 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed “Big Ed” said steering the nation’s largest automaker after bankruptcy is “a public service.” People who know him say he can meet GM’s need for the type of transformation he orchestrated at Dallas-based AT&T.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”

Really?

It is true that to a large degree 'business' is indeed 'business' and there will be many principles that apply in high-tech communications that can also be applied to automotive manufacturing. Given, however, that even after injections of oodles of taxpayer dollars GM more resembles a dead-corpse than a healthy business entity, is now the best time to put a neophyte in charge?

Then again, he's in good company.