[A-List] What's good for the goose

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At one point GM was the largest corporation ever in the United States, in terms of its revenues as a percent of GDP. In 1953 Charles Erwin Wilson , then GM president, was named by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense . When he was asked during the hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". Later this statement was often garbled when quoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was the one of the largest employers in the world - only Soviet state industries employed more people.

On December 31 , 1955 , General Motors became the first American corporation to make over one billion dollars in a year.