There's been a big story for a while now that there are a hundred and twenty four deaths at least linked to an ignition-switch defect that GM just didn't care about. The defect would cause car engines to fail...
So, kind of a big deal. And it's not like they just only recently found out about this; GM engineers and managers knew about this defect for more than a decade — and didn't issue the first recall until February of 2014!
It seems very much a case of amoral accounting: It might actually cost us as a company less to just let them be out there and deal with cases on individual basis, than issuing a massive recall on fleets and fleets of vehicles.
And the big news today is according to two sources, GM will be paying out nine hundred million dollars!!! One source saying:
But the biggest news to me is according to one of the sources:
And that is insane!
Of course, on top of this the first of the civil cases against GM start in January of 2016, but no one's going to be criminally charged — even though people knowingly lied to regulators about something that was killing people!
It's not like they don't know who some of those people are — in 2014 they pushed out 15 executives, but getting pushed out of a company and going to jail for a very obvious crime are two vastly different punishments.
And if you think about it, this is essentially voluntary manslaughter for profit. The only difference between criminals at the top and criminals at the bottom is the guys at the top get to wash away their sins in a fountain of money.
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