11 November 2005

Amtrak CEO Fired.

Amtrak's CEO has been fired. Why? Because he was dragging his feet on carrying out the agenda of the Amtrak board adopted in September. While, I have sympathy for those opposed to that agenda (even though I tend to agree that Amtrak needs to discontinue most of its moribund routes outside the Northeast Corridor, while putting its healthy Northeast Corridor operations on a sounder footing), the CEO's job is not to buck the Board of Directors. He is their servant and it is his job to carry out there will.

It is a lesson most non-governmentally owned corporations have forgotten. Few corporate boards in the United States even have any meaningful agendas of their own, and I can't think of more than one or two cases outside of government where a CEO has ever been fired for not carrying out a bold Board of Director's driven agenda. it isn't surprising. Despite some smoke and mirrors, few corporations in America have boards that aren't beholden to their CEOs for their position in reality. Change that, we'll see a lot more shareholder democracy driven economic growth in this country than any tax cut could have produced.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ever been on an Amtrak train? They're no less full than airplanes. There is nothing worthless about Amtrak.