Yes I think the "Big Three" execs should be fired. Not that their replacements will be much (if any) better, but no-one performs their best if they feel they are immune to the consequences of their mistakes.
I feel there definitely is a "class" difference between high level execs, and all others. If a regular worker gets fired for cause, he may likely loose his pension, and isn't eligible for unemployment compensation. If a high level exec gets fired, well they rarely get fired at all, just "allowed" to resign. No matter how badly they perform, they get a multi-million dollar severence package (AKA golden parachute) and can still collect huge amounts of unemployment comp. And another major company will hire them up in a heartbeat anyway, since they are one of the "club". 50 years ago, when the U.S. was at the height of it's industry, the op execs made 10 to 20 times what the average worker did. Now they make hundreds, even thousands of times as much as the average employee. Even if they break laws (think IBM's Fiorello and her illegal wiretaps and surveilance) they rarely are charged for their crime. The Arthur Anderson fiasco was the exception, not the rule. Financial fraud is common, and even when detected nothing much is done about it.
As for the Auto makers, they did most of this to themselves. They completely failed to foresee market changes and spent huge amounts of money designing and building massive, gas guzzling SUV's. The UAW is also partly to blame. When you include all the benefits and pensions, a UAW worker costs the company about $75,000 per year. The non-UAW workers emplyed by the Japanese companies who have plants in the US cost about $45,000.
Another problem is the way US automakers handle service. For example, about 10 years ago I was driving a 87 Mercury Cougar. One day when I pushed in the clutch pedal, I felt a snap, and the pedal went to the floor and stayed there. When I looked, I was happy to see that the part that failed was an interlink cable, a steel cable about three inches long with a lead ball at each end that went between the main clutch cable and the lever on the trans. It was designed to fail before the main cable did, and was accessable and easy to replace. I thought things would go smoothly until I went to the parts store. That's when I found out that these interlink cables were designed to be specific to one particular model of car, with one particular drivetrain. Since it's deliberatly not a "one size fits all" part, it's only available at the Dealer. Since each model/drivetrain combo has a different lenght cable (and no good reason for that except to exclude third party manufacturers) they didn't even keep them in stock. That short peice of steel cable with lead balls on each end took five days to come in, required a special wrench to install, and cost $25. That experience didn't leave me feeling very happy with Ford/Mercury. On the other hand, I once owned a Toyota Corolla which I bought with over 200k miles on it. About 6 months and 120k more miles later the points wore out. The small garage I went to (this was in a town of about 500 people) said the points were extremely common, had them in stock, and they cost $12. I installed them myself in a parking lot in about five minutes with a needle nose pliers and a swiss army knife.
The Big Three don't offer any electric or hybrid vehicles to the general public. Chevy will have an electric (the Volt) in a year or to, but ot's only good for about 85 miles on a charge. Ther are a couple small companies that already offer a car with twice the range.I was listening to National Public Radio the other day, and the guest propposed that we give some of the "bailout" money to these smaller companies so they can increase production and bring the costs down.
The "Big Three" simply refuse to get with the times and insist on selling what they want to make instead of what the consumers want. GM used to have an electric car called the EV-1. The wouldn't sell them, only leased them to a few people in California. When the leases came up, GM refused to renew them, took the cars back, and crushed all but two. Those two remain in GM's museums, but have had the drivetrain stripped out. They claimed that "people didn't like Electric cars" but nearly everyone who had leased one wanted to keep it. They even staged protests and laid in the driveway of the lot where the cars were being stored before they got crushed. Sounds to me like they liked thos cars just fine, but GM just didn't want to sell electrics since they have far fewer parts that need to be replaced on a regular basis. They simply didn't want to give up any of the replacement part sales that make them and their dealers so much profit. There's a documentary on that called "Who Killed the Electric Car" which is well worth seeing.
