September 10, 2001. The United States was mired in an economic slump. It was teetering toward recession, and it was about to get a lot worse. How much worse? The very next day, four Boeing 757's took off from Boston and New York. These planes, capable of carrying close to 250 people each, contained a total of 201 passengers and crew, combined.
How do we know this? Because that’s how many people died when they were flown into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. This is one of the forgotten stories of the day which became known as 9/11.
When those four planes, two each operated by American and United Airlines, took off on lucrative transcontinental flights, they were barely 20% occupied. When was the last time you were on a flight in which eight out of 10 seats were empty? That is an example of how bad the American economy was on that fateful morning.
Needless to say, the economy grew dramatically worse in an instant when those four planes reached their unscheduled destinations. Virtually all business screeched to a halt. The stock markets were closed. Air traffic was discontinued. Shopping malls and grocery stores were vacant. Streets and highways were empty. Normal everyday commerce was abandoned.
This would have been a dire development in the best of times, but given the state of the economy before that day began, the situation threatened to spin tragically out of control. If something wasn’t done to encourage people to come out of hiding, the recession could have turned into a depression with far reaching consequences.
Enter General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner. Wagoner was stranded in Switzerland. He couldn’t get a flight home, not even on a private jet (this was back in the days when car guys could fly private jets without incurring the wrath of nattering Congressional nonentities), because US air space was closed.
It didn’t take a Nobel winning economist to recognize that things were in desperate straits back home, but only Wagoner had the vision to identify a solution. Only Wagoner acted to help get the American economy moving again, to induce American consumers to emerge from their shells.
Only Wagoner called the office to tell his company to start selling cars at 0% interest. On September 19, GM introduced the program, and people flocked to showrooms across the country. They went, they kicked tires, they test drove, many of them bought, and they all returned home safely. Gradually, the word went out. It was okay to continue to function. Life would go on.
The economy stabilized, at least for another eight years. By that time General Motors was teetering on the edge of collapse. Even if Wagoner had another great idea, it wouldn’t have mattered. He, and General Motors couldn’t have implemented it.
This morning Wagoner went to the well one last time. After several years of painful cuts and desperate acts to stave off destruction, the CEO made one last gesture to save his company. Confronted with the Obama administration’s ultimatum, “Either you resign or we let GM fail,” Wagoner fell on his sword, and resigned, in order to buy time for one last infusion of cash, one last chance to allow General Motors to survive.
With this last act, Wagoner has ensured that he will go into the annals of popular history as the man who drove the world’s greatest industrial company to the brink of destruction. All the errors in judgement, all the short-sighted decisions, all the criminally stupid styling decisions will be laid, unjustly, at his feet. He will fade away, into obscurity. Into disgrace.
Yet before the last shovel of sod is tossed on his professional grave, it should be remembered that, for one shining moment, on September 19, 2001, Rick Wagoner was the man who saved America.