General Motors' new C.E.O., Fritz Henderson, appeared this morning on NBC's
Meet the Press and CNN's
State of the Union to say that G.M. would survive as a company, even though bankruptcy loomed as a viable option. Henderson took the reigns at G.M. after the Administration asked former-C.E.O. Rick Wagoner to resign.
Henderson said that G.M. was focused on quickly returning to profitability so that they could repay the taxpayer's money.
"The day we took money from the taxpayer was one of the -- one of the most difficult days of certainly my career and of the history of General Motors," he said. "We need to respect the fact that we need to look after the taxpayer, we need to justify to the consumer and the taxpayer that we’re going to succeed going forward. And one of the -- one of the happiest days of my future career is going to be the day we pay the loans back."
Henderson refused to rule out the possibility of bankruptcy, saying that the company would do whatever was necessary to meet the goals set by the President's Task Force on the Auto Industry.
"Now we’re 55 days, not 60 days away -- and we either accomplish this job outside of bankruptcy in the short term; or alternatively, if it’s necessary, we’ll go into bankruptcy in order to get this job done," he said.
White House Senior Advisor stressed on Fox News Sunday that G.M. still had much work to do. "Whether it comes through some sort of structured bankruptcy or another process," he said, "there is no doubt that for General Motors to survive and prosper, as we all want them to, they’re going to have to do serious restructuring."
Speaking to the broader economy, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner stressed on CBS' Face the Nation that even as the economy recovers, it may take some time for the unemployment rate to fall.
"The typical pattern of recoveries," he explained, "is that growth recovers, growth starts to turn positive, people start to spend more, people -- businesses hire more, they invest more, before you see unemployment peak. That’s the crude reality of recoveries."
Geithner also left open the possibility that the government would ask bank executives to resign.
"If, in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we’ll make sure that assistance comes with conditions, not just to protect the tax payer but to make sure this is the kind of restructuring necessary for them to emerge stronger," he said. "Where that requires a change of management of the board, we’ll do that."
Geithner also emphatically denied reports that the Administration was working to circumvent Congress' restrictions on executive pay.
"Our obligation is to apply the laws that Congress just passed on executive comp," he said. "And we’re going to do that."
The Sunday talk shows also discussed North Korea's failure this morning to launch a missile that could deliver a payload into orbit. Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., appeared on ABC's This Week before heading to New York for an emergency meeting of the Security Council.
"Our assessment is that their pursuit of a missile capability is of grave concern and that their aim is to achieve the capability to deliver a weapon as potentially as -- to North America. I think we have to look at exactly what transpired today and make a new assessment of the consequences," she said.
