The Journal reports that he'll drive in an Escape hybrid.

Eve, you don't want him reminding everyone of Ford's failures by driving a Pinto. Have him make the trek over a week in an antique Model T instead!

Of the big three executives, Mulally should be cut a little slack. First, he's not a car industry lifer and since moving from Boeing to Ford CEO two years ago has been critical of the industry's insular mindset. Most importantly, he has moved to bring some of the great cars that Ford produces in Europe to North America. Look for some nicely designed fuel-efficient Fords over the next couple of years.

Via Eve , I see that Ford's CEO is planning to drive from Detroit to Washington, "a 10-hour

I get the symbolism, but this is as stupid as taking a private jet. doesn't the highly-paid CEO of a major corporation have anything better to do with his time than drive from detroit to dc? what other businessman would use his time so inefficiently? take a commercial flight for god's sake, like everyone else.

Perkowitz, the Big Three CEOs have offered to accept $1 salaries, so their time is no longer worth so much, unless you're measuring it by the "value" they're contributing  to their cos.

Geez, you people won't give these car guys a break.  No matter what they do they're wrong.  I'm sick of hearing it.

Why aren't any of you as vicious to the money men that ACTUALLY GET GOV'T CASH and have NOTHING to show for it???  Last I checked the car companies actually produce something that did NOT get us in a disaster.  That is unlike these New York assholes on Wall Street that created the catastrophe we've been handed and have ZERO plan to fix it.  I do NOT hear the bashing on these boards and especially from Obama himself, Congressional staff nor the media in general.  About the only ones I hear bringing this up are the likes of Rachael Maddow or Robert Reich.

The double standard from readers and especially snarky writers like Fairbanks, who I'd bet never worked a tough job in her life, is miserable.  If she has, my apologies.  If not, then she just reinforces the arrogant left-coast attitude the GOP loves to portray, and she's living up to it in spades.

And this is coming from a card-carrying southern liberal (who worked lots of shit jobs in high school and college).  Yeah, I'm pissed at the double standard in DC (the crowd that is still corrupt as hell), the media (another group of jerks too often), Obama and too many posters here.  At least be, ahem, fair and balanced in your bashing!

Okay, rant  over.

Tnmats, I for one wonder for e. g. why Robert Rubin is allowed to advise Obama on economic matters.  Just recently Rubin said, if I can get his story straight, that while collecting $115 million in compensation in a non-operations capacity from Citigroup since '99, he presided over some important positive developments at Citigroup.  Yet the fact that it's flaming out has to do with larger macroeconomic forces that no one could have predicted.  He had to expose Citi's portfolio to more risk to keep up with the Jones's, I mean, his hyper-leveraged competition.  Anyway, the ratings agencies all gave good ratings to Citi's CDOs.  Why should Citigroup be responsible for accurately assessing the risk of their own holdings?

Rubin has been in the center of every financial catastrophe for over a decade now.  I wouldn't let him near any economic team of any kind.  He's Typhoid Mary; whever he is, there is disaster.  That's another reason I'm quite leery of any Rubin protege being in charge of anything.  OBama's pick for Treas. sec. was in the middle of all of this mess at the New York Fed but he gets a pass?  I think he screwed up there and it's being papered over.  I'm not expecting much from Obama's choices so far; they're all too connected to the fiascoes of 10 years ago that brought us this mess.

I have no problems with the car company execs being raked over the coals, but I have a big problem with the press (especially those like Fairbanks), Congress along with BO himself being so brazenly hypocritical.  Why aren't these such enlightened ones also going after the banks and Wall Street with the same gusto?  It is plain hypocrisy.  Citi still is paying $400M for naming rights at the new Yankee stadium and still giving our big salaries/bonuses to their criminally negligent execs yet I never hear the press nor Congress bashing them like I hear about the car companies.  These money men bastards took hundreds of billions yet have nothing, nada, zip to show for it and no plans of any kind except to rape the Amercian taxpayer.  AIG alone got $150B, and for WHAT??  The useless dolts in Congress and the administration say nothing except "here, have more"  I think the House GOP members that voted against the bail out a few months back were right to do so.

I think my wife said it best as to why Detroit is getting bashed while the money men get off scott free: she said Detroit's mistake was they came 2nd asking for money.  Me, I have more sinister reasons to think why it's happening this way  and I'm ashamed I even thought of them.

If Obama is  really about "change", then he should at least be paying lip service to bashing the money men more in public.  And if he really is about real change, then these megabanks need to be busted up into little pieces to prevent this mess from happening again.  If that doesn't happen, then he's just more of the same and we were fooled again.

good point, satyendra. and the way some of them have been managing, keeping them busy driving around might be better for the company than letting them actually do any work -- though I think mulally is actually doing a fair job.

for the record, I wasn't fond of the financial bailout either. regardless of where you stand on the bailout though, this is a dumb stunt. it'd be much more impressive to see one of these CEOs on a commercial flight with real, actual peons.

They go from one ridiculous extreme to another.  Flying first class would have been sufficient frugality.

Driving that distance is inefficient under the circumstances, and stupid.  Why didn't they bicycle or jog or hitchhike?