In case you hadn’t heard, the president asked Rick Wagoner – the CEO of GM – to resign, and he complied.  The President of the United States of America basically forced the CEO of a publicly traded company to resign his post.  What in the world could you and I possibly learn from this?  Two things in particular:

• The borrower is slave to the lender.  With GM sucking on the proverbial federal teat, to the tune of $13 billion and counting, Wagoner really had no choice.  A request from the lender ( in this case, the federal government ) is not really a request so much as it is a command.  Any time you’re heavily indebted to another entity, you are effectively under their control.
• Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.  Wagoner’s retirement package is worth $20.2 million dollars.  That’s right, for being El Jefe while GM was in an accelerrating downward spiral, Wagoner gets an extra $20 million.  That’s on top of his $63 million in salary for his working years.  Not a bad amount of compensation for failing so utterly and completely.

So the moral of the story, kids, is 1.  Don’t be a borrower, and 2. Be the CEO of a large corporation.  Don’t necessarily be good at it, but definitely be a CEO.