Entries for September 2006

When you're a CEO who does something stupid, here's the drill: Congress holds hearings. Lawmakers spank you silly. The press hyperventilates. Then you go back to work, while real prosecutors and market forces determine your fate.

The United States is falling from No. 1 to … where exactly? Well, this year, it's No. 6, according to the competitiveness index published by the World Economic Forum, an annual ranking of 125 countries that shows where the business climate is best and worst. Bumping us from the No. 1 spot was Switzerland, followed by three Scandinavian countries—Finland, Sweden, and Denmark—along with Singapore.

Let's assume for a moment that President Bush has a little dial underneath his desk that lets him send gasoline prices up or down, depending on what best suits his political needs. This, evidently, is the belief of a considerable number of Americans, like the 42 percent of respondents in a new Gallup Poll who think the Bush administration is deliberately lowering gas prices to help Republicans in the upcoming November elections. The suspicion isn't really that surprising, given Bush-Cheney ties to Big Oil and Persian Gulf potentates, not to mention demonstrated dishonesty on other big issues like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In its third big restructuring announcement in three years–and its first under new CEO Alan Mulally–Ford says it plans sweeping changes to make the automaker competitive again and return it to profitability. There will be huge numbers of job cuts, painful downsizing, revamped plans to build hot cars, and the discontinuation of sluggish models.

Oh, how the press revels in embarrassments like the boardroom-spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard. Myself included. Yet no matter how damaging the brouhaha is to HP's image, investors seem quite pleased with the way the whole matter has played out.

Has Donald Rumsfeld been running Hewlett-Packard? The unfolding boardroom scandal at the tech giant sounds like one of the Pentagon brawls between the autocratic defense secretary and his equally hard-nosed generals: There's a big dispute over strategy. A dissident unhappy with the organization's decisions leaks his gripes to the press. That triggers a witch hunt, complete with shady tactics that raise tensions to the boiling point. The ensuing protest resignation of a senior official is papered over with world-class euphemisms and obfuscation.

So Bill Ford has shown himself the door. While Wall Street is busy analyzing the merits of his replacement as CEO of Ford Motor Co.--Alan Mulally, a 37-year veteran of Boeing--it is well worth spending a moment to examine the spectacle of a well-known American CEO voluntarily handing the reins to somebody else.