G.M. is apparently too determined to succeed

Ed Wallace at BusinessWeek points out what he considers yet another GM mistake:

There's a fundamental rule of a successful business: "underpromise and overdeliver." That concept has been around since the Studebaker Brothers were building wagons for the Civil War. After the war ended, they codified their business ethic in Studebaker's motto: "Always give a little more than you promise." Nothing better sums up GM's wrongheaded thinking than its execs' promise that the company will return to technological superiority once they finally bring the new Chevrolet Volt to market.

This may be true. The Volt has been so hyped at this point that it's bound to disappoint. At the same time, if G.M. tried to take a low-key approach, I can envision a lot of coverage claiming that a downtrodden G.M. had lost faith in its own products. I'm not sure the automaker can do anything right in the eyes of the mainstream media at this point.

Is it a recession yet?

More uplifting economic news from David Kiley at BusinessWeek:

"Michigan, once the center of America's industrial heartland, now holds a more dubious distinction: It leads the U.S. in joblessness. The state's unemployment rate hit 8.5% in May. That's up 2 percentage points from April, and compares with a figure of 5.5% for the whole U.S. in May...But bad as those unemployment figures look, the reality is actually worse. The official number is arrived at by surveying households and learning how many family members are unemployed but seeking work. So it does not reflect those who have given up finding a job, or those who are not yet looking but soon will be. That second category covers thousands of auto workers who are accepting buyout checks to drop off the payrolls of the companies that make autos or auto parts."