Fire Mary Barra.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Brief article

Early last winter, the Justice Department fined Toyota $1.2 billion for failing to disclose a possible electronic defect that turned out not to exist. Shortly afterward, it became clear that General Motors had spent years covering up an all-too-real defect that, by the Reuters count, killed seventy-four people. If $1.2 billion was the proper fine for regulatory error, the fine for GM's grotesque disregard of human life should be far higher. And there should be clawback of the roughly $145 million in bonuses conferred on Richard Wagoner, Ed Whitacre, Dan Akerson, and Mary Barra, CEOs during the period of the cover-up. Wagoner got an $8 million severance even though the company lost $65 billion under his leadership; he also made the biggest...