This is a tough time to be Rick Wagoner. The embattled chairman and CEO of General Motors is facing a growing chorus of critics calling for his head. With his company losing $10.6 billion last year and Toyota on the verge of overtaking GM as the world’s No. 1 automaker, Wagoner has become the personification of Detroit’s declining fortunes. He’s struggling to engineer a turnaround by closing a dozen factories, offering buyouts to all 113,000 of his blue-collar workers and trying to jump-start sales with new SUVs at a time of high gas prices. Last week his job got even harder: first, GM revealed a widening probe by the SEC and a federal grand jury into its accounting practices. And then Delphi, the bankrupt car-parts maker once owned by GM, asked a judge on Friday to toss out its labor contracts. That could ultimately spark a strike that could drive GM into bankruptcy, analysts say.
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