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Nearly all of the most sought-after exits into the "real world" from Harvard care about GPA: banks, consulting firms, Big Corps, graduate schools, etc.

Right, and then there's this. But employers do give a shit about GPA when recruiting college seniors, because it represents one of the only available metrics for quality of work. In my experience, providing employers with other metrics reduces the value they place on GPA.

It may depend on the case - in many cases, the school a student attended trumps the GPA the student achieved at that school. For schools like Harvard and Yale, it is the brand that employers react to most, not the GPA. Having recruited students from those schools while at a strategy consulting firm, typically we looked at school, then major, then other stuff (which may or may not include GPA). Major was a better indicator of talent level than GPA at those schools.

Perhaps schools should adopt the IIHS ratings scale: Good, Acceptable, Marginal, Poor. Doing away with letter grades that have strong historical bias and cultural signaling might be useful.

Example: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/toyota/4runner

They certainly do if it's your first job out of college. Once you've got work experience, you're right, no one cares about your GPA.