No matter how sympathetic a figure General Motors CEO Mary Barra presents (a woman leading an auto maker!!), the company has been caught deciding that it would be cheaper to let people die in accidents caused by a faulty ignition switch than to correct the problem.  Daniel Howes of the Detroit News explains the smoking gun: “None of the solutions represents an acceptable business case.” Credit those to a still-anonymous GM engineer, who argued in an internal memo that fixes for a faulty ignition switch blamed for at least 13 deaths and more than 30 accidents could not be done cheaply enough to make it worthwhile for the GM of a decade ago. The cult movie Fight Club famously explained the logic at work: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the...(Read Full Post)