I have been following the bail out plea of the Big Three automakers of Detroit for quite a while now. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, iconic brands of the American car industry are now in the brims of bankruptcy with government bailout being their only option for survival. As some one who has driven and owned some of their cars and as a fellow American it pains me to see the CEO’s of these companies mumbling lame answers for questions raised by the Congress. But much of this is their own making.

Even as their ideas of making gas guzzling cars in these days of fluctuating oil prices became a subject of debate, the CEO’s of the companies also came in for much criticism for flying in private jets to Washington to seek bailout for their companies from the Congress. That brings us to the question of austerity and cost cutting measures adopted by the CEO’s in their personal front, when they axe hundreds and thousands of jobs in the name of cost cutting.

There seem to be very few CEO’s who lead by example when it comes to implementing real cost cutting measures and austerity. The CEO of Japan Airlines for instance was in the news recently for taking a salary cut, making his pay much lower than what his pilots take home. The CEO slashed his pay to $90,000, something that most American middle level managers take home. And what a joke it was when the CEO’s of the Big three said that they will henceforth take home only $1 as their pay.

Having said that I should also add that it this seems to be the case only with the large corporations. I am sure new entrepreneurs and small corporations are feeling the heat of the recession even more due to their size and possibly inexperience in tackling such crises head on. And when it comes to survival, there does not seem to be much difference between the GM’s and Ford’s of the world and these small ventures. Like this entrepreneur’s experiences that he states in the ‘First time CEO’s recession survival guide’, you won’t own all the proceeds if the company succeeds, but you’ll certainly own a failure in its entirety.

The large corporations atleast have a well established board, wise bankers and investors advising them on handling recession. And most of these corporations have been there, done that and fairly know how to sail through the crises. But for entrepreneurs and first time CEO’s this is an acid test and a time when Darwin’s theory of ‘Struggle for existence and survival of the fittest’ really comes into play.

Call it sadistic pleasure, but it sort of makes me happy to know that whether the CEO of a Ford, GM, a new corporation like Redfin or an ordinary person like me, the recession hits us all and is a great equalizer that way.