The Chicago Tribune has an interesting, even if unconvincing, piece that suggests stock based compensation resulting from shareholder pressure led to GM's unstable financial condition:

First, a bit of history. Wall Street and institutional investors' pension funds, mutual funds and trusts began insisting in the 1990s that companies return more cash to shareholders. They claimed that managers were squandering resources on lavish perks and misguided acquisitions.

In the early years of the revolution, managers of U.S. corporations occasionally said no to investor demands. A couple of things got rid of that behavior. First, CEOs who bucked shareholders sometimes found themselves out of a job. Second, executive share ownership and stock options became the coin of the realm. Eventually they comprised the bulk of CEO pay. And now, CEOs wanted the same thing as owners: high returns to owning stock.

And now back to GM (NYSE: GM). Because of its size, the company was ground central for a shareholder revolution. Robert Stempel, chief executive officer, lost his job in 1992 due to pressure from institutional investors. Subsequently, the company raised the percentage of executive compensation based on stock ownership and stock options.

What happened to payout ratios? From 1996 to 2000, GM delivered more than $20 billion to shareholders: $13 billion in multiple repurchases and an additional $7 billion in dividends.

It's impossible to say where GM would be today had it spent some of that $20 billion on research and development and a rainy-day pension fund. But surely it would be a far better place than here.