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What really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was, 'We'll build it and you buy it. We'll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.'

My goal in coming to General Motors was to help restore profitability, build a strong market position and position this iconic company for success. We are clearly on that path.

Our thinking behind these agreements is that we want all jobs in General Motors to be good jobs.

When you look at the truck market in North America, you have to understand the customer, and that's one of the things I think General Motors does really well. There's a big population that buys our trucks. It's their life - or it's their livelihood. Not their lifestyle, their livelihood. It's a work truck.

For value investors, General Motors is a tempting target. The company's share of the North American auto market has steadily declined for two decades, and analysts say the company suffers from weak management and unexciting cars.

We just put General Motors in the hands of people who can't even run our own government.

And so we said to General Motors that the solution had to be a first year increase, which had to be sizeable because we had to catch up with the lost position as against the cost of living and we had to make some progress.

Barack Obama likes to point to General Motors as the poster child for the job creation success of his economic policies. However, whatever your sentiments about the government's bailout of General Motors, for every job Barack Obama 'saved-or-created' in the U.S. there were two jobs off shore.

General Motors spends more on health care than steel.