Osler's Razor

GM stock is now under $10 a share, less than it was worth in 1954. GM stock has dropped 74% over the past year.

According to the people from GM.com who commented on my previous post, this incredible loss of value which reflects a near-total rejection by the markets has nothing, no nothing, to do with GM's management. Rather, as I understand their comments, it is due to the following:

1) Sharply higher oil prices, which no one ever could have predicted! It's a total shock! Why would anyone ever have thought that could ever happen?!?!

2) Greedy, greedy workers, who greedily accepted the pensions and health care offered by GM management after negotiations, and now are greedily contracting expensive old-people diseases.

3) The failure of Americans to embrace GM's offerings. Why, why, were we too stupid to see the genius of the Pontiac Aztek (about which Time Magazine said "This car couldn't have been more instantly hated if it had a swastika tattoo on its forehead"), the Chevette, the Cadillac Cimmaron, the GM minivans, the Hummer H3, the Corvair, and the Chevy Vega?

4) Congress, which forced GM to lobby for years against increased mileage requirement, money which GM could have used for acquiring other companies.

5) Everybody else, pretty much, except the GM executives who made the strategic decision that got the company to the brink of bankruptcy. As they will repeatedly tell you.

Maybe I'm naive, but I'm thinking that perhaps a part of the GM culture that got the company to this dismal position is an inability to admit mistakes and then improve. A culture without accountability is the kind of culture that produces the Pontiac Aztek and then keeps it on the market for years, and a culture that perhaps needs to wake up. Fast.