They say that ignorance is curable, but stupidity is terminal. Bobo disproves that witicism every column. Today, he claims to have discovered "what’s wrong with GM": its corporate culture. And he’s discovered a great fault with Obama’s plans: the government might force GM to make better, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

There is no evidence that there is a large American market for these cars.

The happiest news Honda, Hyundai, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and China Inc., could hear is that Obama has hired David Brooks as GM’s new director of marketing.

GM’s problems are not those recited by Bobo. It is not that it couldn’t recruit and keep top talent. It has some of the best engineering, managerial, financial and legal minds in business. It actuvely recruits and hires from the top business, engineering and law schools. It is not, as Bobo claims, its "insane" labor practices (some are outlandish dodges, many are copied worldwide). It is not its or the government’s technocrats or technocratic solutions (vague epithets Brooks often uses). It certainly isn’t because GM is Wall Street’s newest "pariah". Wall Street rehabilitates those faster than you can say "Grand Jury" or "state’s evidence".

Bobo misreads GM so completely, he inadvertently illustrates his own premise: that it is GM’s "corporate culture", not its talent base or resources that most ails it. He, like Congress and senior GM men, is so content with his pay and benefits that he has scant empathy for those who lack them. He has so many people petting him behind the ear for what he does now, he has no incentive to change his world view. Being comfortable now, he is loathe to risk that comfort to adapt to the world heaving with change round him. He doesn’t want government to level the business playing field by enacting credible universal health care or more rational trade policies. He wants Wall Street to have ready access to GM and for the government to wipe its beak when it’s through.

Bobo is grief stricken, for example, that the government, as GM’s biggest shareholder, might demand that management adopt its priorities rather than those set by some mythical, perfectly informed and functioning "market". I hate to break in on Bobo’s ignorance, but capitalism is based on the controlling shareholder’s right to do exactly that.

Bobo claims to be worried that the government, as the fiduciary investor on behalf of its taxpayers, might make GM focus on making smaller, better and more fuel-efficient cars.

I think he’s worried the government might be right, which could set off two chain reactions. The government might impose rational priorities over banks and others to whom it has lent billions. And other shareholders might do the same – demand more from their somnolent boards and self-serving managers. That would be a good thing for capitalism, a bad thing for big capitalists and their pundits.