The issue of oversized compensations/retirement plans, accounting legerdemains, bad car design and bad car quality, is all related: horrible management. They didn't stand up to the unions, decided to play games with numbers instead of running a business, kept their head buried in the sand about the relative quality of their product vs. the Japanese, and chose lousy products.
Nothing overcomes bad management; not just years, but decades of horrible management. But we'll do so much better now with the government choosing new management. Bad business decisions surely will be ended by inserting politics into the equation.
The US government actually has a long history of successfully turning around companies. Often the problems are obvious when you actually look at the numbers but management and labor are so dysfunctional they keep acting in an irrational fashion. People like to say large organizations need incredible talent at the top, but the sad truth is simple competence is hard to come by because you don't get into C level positions at billion dollar companies because of skills related to the job.
Nothing overcomes bad management; not just years, but decades of horrible management. But we'll do so much better now with the government choosing new management. Bad business decisions surely will be ended by inserting politics into the equation.