Wagoner Out at GM
The White House asks GM’s Wagoner to step down:
The Obama administration asked Wagoner, 56, to leave the company and he agreed, an administration official said. Wagoner said March 19 that he didn’t plan to resign. The likely replacement, unless the government hires from outside the company, would be Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson, said John Casesa, managing partner at New York-based consulting firm Casesa Shapiro Group.
“If they go to someone inside, Fritz is the obvious choice,” Casesa said. “He’s run every region, he’s been number two and he knows where all the bodies are buried.”
The departure of Wagoner comes as President Barack Obama prepares an address tomorrow morning on his plans for the future of the U.S. auto industry. GM is surviving on $13.4 billion in U.S. loans and is asking for as much as $16.6 billion in additional aid to survive. Wagoner was asked to step down as part of the company’s restructuring, the official said.
“It’s very hard for the government to write a big check without giving some evidence of change,” Casesa said. “This will also give the government moral authority with the other stakeholders to make them sacrifice.” (emphasis added)
Really? Heads will roll before writing big checks?
Funny, I kinda remember a trillion dispensed without so much as — You. Out!.
I am no fan of Wagoners, but I have to ask the geniuses behind the bank bailouts: When are you going to ask the TARP and bailout recipients to step down? Ken Lewis being asked to step aside after many years of running BofA ? How about Blankfein? Pandit? And the rest of the TARP recipients?
This inconsistency from the new administration is very disappointing.
>
Previously:
Why Are Banks So Different From Autos? (December 9th, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/why-are-banks-so-different-from-autos/
Why Bankruptcy For Autos But Not Banks? (February 23rd, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/why-bankruptcy-for-autos-not-banks/
Sources:
G.M. Chief Is Said to Be Resigning in Deal With U.S.
BILL VLASIC and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, March 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/30auto.html
General Motors Chief Rick Wagoner Said to Step Down
Doron Levin and Jeff Green
Bloomberg, March 29 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWQfUoJXk8jc&
GM chief Wagoner to resign at Obama’s request
Michael Kitchen
MarketWatch, March 29, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/wagonerout
Government Forces Out GM CEO Wagoner
NEIL KING JR. and JOHN D. STOLL
WSJ, MARCH 30, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123836090755767077.html
March 29th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Eyeball the green bars for “Transportation” and “Finance, Insurance & Real Estate” here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectorallc.php?cycle=2008
And the answer “never” should pop out of the ether.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Agreed on the disappointment. There are some positive political developments, but nothing that will offset the mishandling of the corruption of the banks and Wall Street.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
The lesson here is if you are going to royally screw up a company that is too big to fail, make sure you hide the “products” at the center of a deep 100 mile maze lined with flesh-eating green goo and for good measure, set some stone-club wielding cyclopes loose to wander around inside it. Those bailing you out will have to keep you on simply because there are no maps.
Better that the government should have nuked the whole place into a glass parking lot last August, but that’s not where we are now.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
You mean the inconsistency between this administration and the last? or between Geitner and Paulson?
March 29th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_playlists&search_query=the+obama+deception
there are some things we need to understand, before this can be understood
March 29th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I think this is kinda scary that the government can now force the CEO of a private enterprise to step down. I know they received money and they want more but the fact is that they should not have received it in the first place. And GM isn’t owned by the govt. like AIG.
I’m not saying Wagoner was a good CEO. Only the principle is scary.
~~~
BR: Private enterprise?
How do you figure? They took asked for and got $30 billion from the government, and now want another $30B.
As soon as you become dependent upon the biggest guy in the cell block for protection, you become his bitch.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
eric davis, he is referring to the inconsistency of getting rid of Wagner for screwing up GM, but keeping Lewis, Blankfein, and Pandit.
The reason is that GM works for Obama, but Obama (via Geithner) works for Wall Street.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
This puts Geithner in a completely indefensible position if he tries to defend particular bankers. When he is asked why they are so indespensible, he has no reply.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
not sure this was really a good thing. GM”S problems predate him by over 20 years. and are basically a problem with not escrowing enough money for retirement benefits. the other problems were stupid product choices, and not moving fast enough decades ago. but today they have moved very quickly considering they make stuff (as oppose to creating money the new fangled way. financial wizardry) and they like all the others are hurting badly. but i guess this could mean that the banks will eventually have their time. if not now them when the IMF comes calling
March 29th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Well, with eight years at the helm, Wagoner’s mismanagement is indefensible. There does seem to be a revolving door at most large banks (even though some of the same faces keep popping up). I like a Marshall plan-like concept more and more every day.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
This inconsistency may be disappointing, but it reflects the relative political power of the auto industry vs the finance industry. The finance industry was more politically powerful than FDR. Likewise Obama.
PPIP plus stress test plus public outrage may be enough to back the big banks into a corner were some of them get “FDIC”ed but it may require legislation to remove legal roadblocks the banks will surely erect. Geithner is pushing hard for such legislation, which may be why he was being cagey about AIG with George S on Sunday.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I’ll offer to replace him as long as I don’t have to move to that armpit (Detroit)
March 29th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
@ Oliver Gagnon-
You have read my mind- this really makes me ill. The car companies were totally scapegoated while the banks keep the same folks in charge. I think that Darkness @8:13 hits it on the head though- the USG is scared of a complete financial breakdown- they are pissing their pants over this- and have kept the folks that caused the disaster at the wheel because they don’t know how to fix this thing. It is THE DEPRESSION they fear.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Inconsistency? Except for the softening of the rhetoric, I’d swear there had been no change in administrations. It appears you c-a-n fool all the people all the time.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
“This inconsistency from the new administration is very disappointing.”
That’s where you are wrong Barry. They are consistently inconsistent therefore we should worry too much about inconsistency – because they will always be so. Therefore, do not worry about precedent, standards, and such. This adminstration would rather try to make it up as they go along instead of try to learn from precedent and history. BTW, how approriate the cover of this week’s Economist – a picture of Obama with the heading above it – “Learning the Hard Way”. Nothing could be truer of this administration – and I voted for and like the guy!
March 29th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
“And the rest of the TARP recipients?”
Right On!!
March 29th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
The irony was rich the other day when Obama talked about how we couldn’t just keep supporting the same old flawed business models.
I hope the labor unions are happy with what they got.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
@willid3- ‘not setting aside enough for retirement benefits’ is/was GM’s big problem?!?
how about bloated cost structure?
how about crappy products for years?
how about just being way too big?
March 29th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I’m surprised that noone has drawn the parallels between the Gov’t’s annointing the NRSROs and its effect on the ‘ratings’-industry, and the Gov’t ‘protection/enforcement’ of ‘The Big Three’ and its effect on the ‘automobile’-industry…
March 29th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
So, is Ron Gettlefinger (UAW President) getting the axe too? I mean, he was at least partly responsible for it as well.
However, I suspect that a democrat president would be highly unlikely to do that.
I think Wagoner is reasonably responsible. . . but, he isn’t the only one.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I don’t quite understand what your guys’ problem is. When did the President say he would upend the world and shake it till we got justice, regardless of how much damage he did going forward? Do you not know your history?
President Obama is doing exactly what President Roosevelt did in 1933. There were plenty of calls for FDR to come in with the scythe of death and cull the herd, but FDR didn’t do that. Instead, he worked within the system, passed new laws to reform it and relieve suffering, and introduced programs that brought about a major recovery by 1935/6.
It might surprise you to learn this, but many people were calling for FDR to be given dictatorial powers in March 1933. That’s how scared Americans were. In most of the world, rulers accepted these powers. FDR declined them, and he singlehandedly saved American democracy. Fortunately, we never got anywhere near that point, and I do give Bush credit for having abandoned his wacky ideology. Maybe it was too late to avoid a depression, but that one act did save us from a Great Depression II.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
If inconsistent means changing from a bad idea to a good one, then I’m for it. If consistent means stubbornly staying the course when wrong, then I’m not for it. In other words, whether an idea is good or not has nothing to do with its consistency.
I’m glad to see that Wagoner is leaving; he was the most arrogant of the 3 CEOs.
I have no idea as to his leaving will be the ‘thing’ that fixes GM; it just feels better.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
franklin,
you should sue your “History” professors for Fraud..
either that, or disclose the name of the PAC(s) that is/are paying you.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Mark,
I am the professor. Well, in 6 months anyway. Dissertation-writing right now. FDR turned this nation around in under 1 year–there’s a reason why New Deal haters point to 1938 and never want to talk about economic statistics in any other year. If they did look at the whole 1930s, they’d have to admit that the New Deal worked and the only time when it didn’t work (1937/8) was when FDR listened to the conservatives.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
My guess is Wagoner “the most arrogant” chose not to play ball with BO. BO does not take prisoners.
But it is true we are perilously close to Hayek’s principal central planning fiasco. Scary.
But I also suspect some of the comments here that the USG is peeing it’s pants are dead on. Q1 earnings. And the USG probably has more than enough early leaked info to need to keep stoking the fires.
The next few weeks should be interesting to see what BO and boys do keep the market from going down in flames.
It will be interesting to see how the market responds tomorrow. Might not be pretty.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
We are subject to competing histories – especially those of the Depression and FDR’s administrations and the relationship between those two things. I’ll say this for FDR: He kept getting elected, he had personal adversity in addition to some god-awful events during his terms, and I believe he paved the way for Pax Americana and the most wealthy middle class the world has ever known – the latter two of which are in their death throes right now.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Great so why the f*ck was Obama not as bold asking CEO’s of Goldman Sacks, Citibank, Bank America and others crooked banks that got bailout money ?
Being that the US Banking oligarchy f*cked up and still won big
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200905/imf-advice
by Simon Johnson
The USA in addition to having most advanced economy and military also has the most advanced oligarchy so if the Obama admin doesn’t swing the banking regulation pendulum back we’ll also be the world’s largest Banana Republic
March 29th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
franklin,
here’s one account that, even FDR ‘ficianados applaud:
“A revealing account of the critical first days of FDR’s presidency, during the worst moments of the Great Depression, when he and his inner circle launched the New Deal and presided over the birth of modern America
Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history—the tense, feverish first one hundred days of FDR’s presidency, when he and his inner circle swept away the old order and reinvented the role of the federal government. When FDR took his oath of office in March 1933, thousands of banks had gone under following the Crash of 1929, a quarter of American workers were unemployed, farmers were in open rebellion, and hungry people descended on garbage dumps and fought over scraps of food. Before the Hundred Days, the federal government was limited in scope and ambition; by the end, it had assumed an active responsibility for the welfare of all of its citizens.
Adam Cohen offers an illuminating group portrait of the five members of FDR’s inner circle who played the greatest roles in this unprecedented transformation, revealing in turn what their personal dynamics suggest about FDR’s leadership style. These four men and one woman frequently pushed FDR to embrace more activist programs than he would have otherwise. …”
http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadershop/9781594201967.html
including this dreaded hack/propagandist: ““In the veritable library of books about the New Deal, Adam Cohen’s new entry deserves a prominent place on the top shelf. In my judgment, the story of the Hundred Days has never been told so well, nor the cast of characters rendered so compellingly.”
—Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Creation
FDR sure turned things alright..
March 29th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
ndmaster Says:
March 29th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
@willid3- ‘not setting aside enough for retirement benefits’ is/was GM’s big problem?!?
It is if you know what the contract (and these are contracts just like any other) means. they set the escrowing based on a very short life span for their retirees. and if those retirees out live your estimated life span (and they did) you have to pump cash into the retirement benefits plans that you agreed to. thats why this is such a big issue for them
that is the legacy cost that every one has been griping about. and the only way to get to a 75/hour wage. its retirees health care and pension.
and i am not sure that even if you use this bloated number that you actually get a high labor cost per vehicle. the average number of hours to produce a vehicle is less than 20 hours. at that rate the most the labor could be is 1500. if you have ever looked you would know that the average rebate is usually about 1000 and runs up to almost 7500.
if you ever checked you would know that the Japanese car companies are all unionized. just not in the US.
and the most expensive labor (by far) is in Germany.
the advantage the foreign car companies have is that they don’t have to deal with retiree health care since their country has national health care.
guess which is more costly?
how about bloated cost structure?
taking away labor cost (less 2K) the remaining is materials, research, financing, technology, IT , etc.
and of course the vehicles don’t sell immediately. so there is other over head,
the biggest problem is they don’t have the plants running at capacity. thats the main driver for the rebates. keep the production up and the cost of production plummets.
and if you had looked you would also know that of the top 20 most efficient car plants in the US, 19 belong to domestics.
how about crappy products for years?
for several years they did have some pretty bad cars, but its been a long time. but once buyers have that opinion its take a long time to get back into good graces. they are still working on it. but oddly enough of the top 20 models sold, the majority (by far) are domestics. and a lot of the top new cars are domestics out shining their foreign competitors as judged by the car magazines, and from the buyers of the cars.
how about just being way too big?
too big? well to be an international car company you tend to be big. they aren’t that much bigger (if any) than say Toyota. and most car companies that sell in this country aren’t exactly small.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
“When are you going to ask the TARP and bailout recipients to step down?”
Silly question.
Banks are special.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
us phx,
see: http://www.mises.org/books/TRTS/
and:
“There’s something creepy about the impending resignation of the head of GM, in anticipation of an announced bailout of the company. Not that Rick Wagoner doesn’t deserve to go, but his departure will be used as the news to justify the continuation of a broken system. So too the Soviet system existed for 70 years with a general pattern that the head of state would blame all problems on the existing management of state-owned companies, that they were thieves, incompetent, disobedient, insufficiently loyal to socialism or whatever. It wasn’t the state, the intervention, the system, but always and everywhere the personnel–they had to be shot or imprisoned as a matter of justice–and if we could just get the right people in charge of the factories, it would be onward and upward to socialist utopia. The management served as the scapegoats, people for the public to blame all problems on as a way of distracting from the real problem. Something about this news suggests something along the same lines.”
http://blog.mises.org/archives/009703.asp
March 29th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Uh, Barry….
I understand Obama doesn’t really like you much either….
Just trying to give you a heads up….
(But GM will need a new CEO…)
March 29th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
A couple of days ago I called Ford @ 2.90 (in truth I was being lazy- I had thinking about their bonds) but hell the common shares may retrench a little and then move up. If I’m wrong, I will accept my defeat and ignominy by commiserating with ole Rick Wagoner at the Red Fox Restaurant on Telegraph.
Guess Mr. Obama wanted a taste of blood. The whole deal only increases my estimation of Mr. Mullaly.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-auto-bailout29-2009mar29,0,408241.story
March 29th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
@ Ahab, Gagnon, Darkness:
A fear of a depression or a lack of roadmaps can’t be the proxy for logic on why the Team Obama keeps in place even the CEOs of every mismanaged bank after bank. Do we really believe Team Obama feels that only Lewis, Blankfein, and Pandit and only they can manage their banks and help ‘fix their problems’? And while existing in the reality honestly disclosed by Warren Buffet, to paraphrase: no one knows if what they’re doing will work because this is all historically unprecedented.
I think the more likely reason is that Obama egregiously defers to Geithner/Summers, and they’re simply ‘blinded by allegiance’ to Wall Street, or. When Obama decided to run for Prez after evaluating the scene in 2005-06, he saw himself as the rightfully manifestly superior candidate cuz he came equipped with solutions in hand for the problems of 2005-06, which he did NOT think include restructuring the domestic and global financial system and guiding the nation down from a $xxx Trillion asset valuation/debt bubble while being tethered to recession-wracked China, Japan and the Eurozone. Obama writes 4 major books that not once involved the words or concepts of deleveraging or debt unwind or deflation. He expected a world that simply needed some tweaking of NAFTA and tax codes, window dressing of health care, some fresh Kyoto accords, troop wind downs and closing Guantanamo Bay.
And what he got instead were lousy inter-linked unprecedented global financial bubbles deflating in tandem as scores of multi-decade-old economic models ground to a halt, spent & lifeless as the cadavers they truly are.
It’s like the Generals of WW2 preparing for WW2-redux and getting slapped with Vietnams inflated and simultaneously exported to every global jungle instead. We’re gonna need to cycle thru a bunch of prezs and Economic Advisors just as we did in 1973-1984 before giving birth to the (now expired) debt-fueled Service Economy and GDP model.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Team Obama was still campaigning on ‘Hope-n-Change’ a mere 30 days prior to the onset of 24% collapse on Wall Street that commenced at the end of September, not because of Axelrod’s magic or that it was a singularly-winning slogan with some life left, but because Team Obama still had not grasped that the economic crisis was far bigger than just sub-prime foreclosure and pesky gas prices. Team Obama are today and will be tomorrow, ‘winging it’ and ‘slinging it’ as they go. It’s not pro or anti BHO, its just simple observation.
And as I write as an Obama voter, resident of Illinois, and voter from his state senate years. They’re winging it and slinging it.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Avl Dao:
I think you’re mostly right. Notice that we no longer fear terrorists behind every bush or tree (islamofascism is tres passe) and there’s hardly any mention of illegal immigration. Only people who gravitated towards blogs like this saw the tsunami coming (that’s how and why they found places like TBP and CR).
March 29th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
The inconsistency is hardly surprising. The bankers are running the asylum.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:14 am
i remember this a.. was talking about h2 hummer with an excitement. i am very surprised he survived so long. shame on tbod shame on corporate us. i’ll never buy a gm car, probably. there are more of this kind at gm.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:37 am
@Avl Dao:
“A fear of a depression or a lack of roadmaps can’t be the proxy for logic on why the Team Obama keeps in place even the CEOs of every mismanaged bank after bank.”
What are you talking about? So far, Mozzilla, Thain, O’Neil, Prince, Sullivan, Willumstad, Fuld, Thompson, Killinger, Mudd, Moffet, and Schwartz are gone. Those were the CEOs of Countrywide, Merrill, Merrill, Citi, AIG, AIG, Lehman, Bear Stearns, WaMu, Fannie and Freddie.
The CEOs running whats left are all new except for at JPM, BAC, and Wells. Three survivors out of 13. Not good odds being CEO of a big financial company.
The shame is that the guys who ran the ship aground all exited with fortunes.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:16 am
No electric car?
You’re fired.
Sounds good to me.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Obama Denies Funds for Automaker Bailouts.
http://bluelori.blogspot.com/2009/03/where-is-your-obama-now.html
http://bluelori.blogspot.com/2009/03/resident-cries-wolf-then-appoints-wolf.html
March 30th, 2009 at 2:48 am
If you can’t fix something after 8 years, you never will.
That having been said, he must have recognised his a*s was on the line and that under the circumstances he could have adopted a really radical plan, but didn’t. My guess is he’s had enough and wanted out. Next comes the details of the severance package?!
March 30th, 2009 at 4:55 am
I think we give internet users a vote on car design features. Why don’t all car stereos have a jack on the front to plug in my MP3 player? How much would that cost to add? 10 cents? Yet the value to me is at least $100
March 30th, 2009 at 6:18 am
well, if he fired Nardelli, it would have brought Cerberus into the spotlight, as well as what, Nards hatcheted HD into, and out of..
and F never did take the bait, did they?
fyi..
Cer·ber·us (sûrbr-s)
n. Greek & Roman Mythology
A three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades.
——————————————————————————–
Cerber·ean (sûrb-rn) adj.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Cerberus
http://www.hedgeco.net/search_result.php?q=cerberus
March 30th, 2009 at 6:59 am
The new administration has been very consistent: same policies as before with slightly different symbolism and rhetoric. Like a metronome.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:40 am
A look at any Sunday newspaper ought to be enough evidence that we have had overcapacity in auto and truck mfg for decades.
There are simply too many cars and with the advent of China and Indian entry into this already overcrowded segment, it would not be noticed if several companies ceased to exist.
March 30th, 2009 at 8:34 am
While there are good reasons to remove many bank heads, I would like to see the minutes of Paulson’s secret meeting and find out which banks he “forced” to take the TARP money. Remember the two reasons banks took the TARP money was they were reportedly forced, and the government wanted to provide additional capital to “good” banks so they could make more loans. But I guess it is just more government inconsistency, say one thing but do another.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I remember Wagoner about a year ago saying in an interview basically that he thought demand was strong for SUV’s, and they were going to keep making them, that was the beginning of the end in my opinion of him.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:37 am
bman,
check this out: http://www.autointell.com/News-2007/June-2007/Jun-2/june-13-07-p10.htm
like something out of “The Ministry of Truth”
the whole SUV category has been ‘disappeared’
March 30th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I think they are consistantly bad. But GM was told to come up with a plan by the deadline and they failed to turn in thier homework. I think that the administration should ask all of them for a plan now. Most of them would have one this time, expect for the ones that know better and prefer getting thier golden parachute over trying to put lipstick on a zombie pig.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:43 am
not sure why Nardelli got a pass either. he has no automotive experience. only can guess thats its because he is relatively new. but that will only last for a short time. like maybe next month? and with this, maybe this was a shot across the bow of the bank/insurance CEOS? then again, maybe not, the financial wizards seem to still have to much control of the government!
March 30th, 2009 at 11:08 am
“I am no fan of Wagoners, but I have to ask the geniuses behind the bank bailouts: ”
BR I am reminded of Colin Powell telling Bush, if you break Iraq you own it. If GM winds up filing bnakruptcy, Obama owns it and he is credited with the faiulure?
March 30th, 2009 at 11:59 am
But don’t get me wrong, Although Wagoner may deserve the stiff boot, I still Think the bank executives and other financial wonks are more deserving of the Wooden Stake. Unfortunately we are no longer in the 15th century. The idea that Merging GM and Chrysler will somehow make things better, came straight out of the old playbook, and once again shows that the lowest common denominator is what is being chosen as the new poilicy going forward.
I say fire Geithner.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
MEH:
This link was entirely too appropo (sp) :
http://www.mises.org/books/TRTS/
These should be pasted on empty office building walls. Way, way too close to the truth.
March 31st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
bman: first, the wooden stakes for congress.