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Rattner (Again)?
No sooner than we took note of the sudden appearance of Fortune's puff piece on the restructuring genius embodied in Steven Rattner, the man himself appears on Bloomberg Live TV (adroitly brought to you by the new E-Class by Mercedes Benz!) almost literally reading word-for-word from a cutout of the Fortune article. (One is instantly reminded of sitting through the stuttering, halting and taut delivery of student presentations in 8th grade English- "It was so SCARY, mom!"). Why, one wonders, the sudden push? Why re-open this wound so publicly now? Why the absolutely apologetic rhetoric filled with all the familiar socialist apologies?
The mind boggles, and theories race forward:
Are the automakers about to announce rather serious bad news? Has Rattner gotten wind of some escalation in the investigation of his firm, Quadrangle? Perhaps The Ratt's tell-all book is due out presently? d) All of the above?
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I always raise my protective force field when the marching band takes the field and it's not even half time. You never know what's about to happen but you know it's gonna be good.
I was actually thinking more like the end of Cal/Stanford in 1982. And yes, that did not work out too well for John Elway.
Teleprompter administration
The administration would benefit by puting a teleprompter in front of V.P. Biden.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct7TGWGWYzk
Every administration needs a fall guy to send up trial balloons while making it appear they aren't trial balloons.
In this case, it's just not that difficult for Biden to be the fall guy. It's almost immaterial whether he's a buffoon or not but it is great TV, isn't it.
I say this because it's clear that sooner or later (IMHO) when the next leg down has commenced, someone will need to begin to use the "D" word since recession has already been declared and then cleared.
Agreed with everything you so cogently and intelligently stated, CD, but would use instead the "N D" phrase -- as in Neverending Depression.
Glad to see this show. It's about time that the intrepid Brooksley Born had her day in the limelight as she was the most notable of that mediocrity of administrations (Clinton obviously didn't hire her for AG as she was more intelligent than he!). It also demonstrates that Rubin, Summers, Greenspan should be doing time in jail right now (as well as Paulson, Geithner, Cayne, Peterson, Schwarzman, Carlucci, etc.).
sgt_doom,
I thought I was well read but I've never seen the Never-ending Depression phrase up to now. With your permission it will be immediately added to my vocabulary.
In fact, I just updated spell check in Microsoft Word to recognize the latest term to describe the abomination we call our economy.
Please note that Word did insist on adding a hyphen between never and ending. Is this permissible? :>))
Absolutely, especially as I would never argue with any product from Mc$oftware. Ever since BillG's wife, Melinda, created that user interface, Bob, I knew they were on to something big.....
Never-ending Depression it be, unfortunately....
I've obviously been living in a cave (NSA, can you hear me now?) because you've sprung another term of endearment on me out of the blue.
Mc$oftware. My oh my.
Interestingly, when I tried to add this to my Word dictionary, my computer suddenly crashed and would not turn back on until I apologized.
Of course in desperation I promptly apologized, profusely I might add, and once my computer booted back up, I immediately disconnected all the safeties and road side bombs that had been magically deposited onto my hard drive complements of Mc$oftware.
Once the path was clear, I disconnected the Word dictionary spell check self destruct function and deposited "Mc$oftware" safely on my computer. While all seems OK at this point, I do hear some grinding coming from my hard drive
I hope to hell my computer starts tomorrow morning or you and I may have some Words between us.
Probably it's because he's a public spirited kind of guy... he cares about his fellow man and wants to educate the citizenry about important issues that affect their future.
Uh, yeah - I'm sure that's just what it is.
My bet is that Chrysler about to announce its going to its well deserved Final Destination. Another $20B well spent by the taxpayer.
a lot of ass kissing of Summers, Geithner and Obama in the speech
Larry is the smartest guy in the room.
One can be second smartest if they acknowledge the first.
there ya go, now go get me a Diet Coke.
rattner is another huge democractic insider even, and of course a former NYT reporter which makes him the top pick to translate those auto skills into a backstop for the newspaper and media business given his public spirited mindset.
Rattner the "Media Czar" - sounds good he's just the guy to deal with the Fox network and conservative talk radio - all he needs is some designer threads by Adzhubei
MTLQQ up almost 4 % on a volume of 2.5m
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MTLQQ.PK
The bigger question is who will Obama toffer up at the alter of populism? Where's the geithner contract trading?
one of my poker buddies runs a small nissan dealership. he is completely back at full inventory. he sold 80 cars 2 months ago.. 20 this month.
The cynical would say it's all runway foaming, portraying Steven Rattner as the noble-minded public servant and savior of the American auto industry and not a sleazy operator whose private equity firm was involved in looting new york's pension funds thanks to some well-placed bribes.
My money's on a front-running of some bad news from Quadrangle's problems.
You're not suggesting that Raj's rolodex had Steve's direct number from his Quadrangle days (Tel: 212.418.17**), are you?
Smokescreen. Another 3 card monte. He don't know shit about cars or the car industry. His expertise is MEDIA. His contacts are in the Media industry. My guess is that he's really giving Media advice to Rahm & Co.
Rattner has a conflict of interest? Neil Brofsky's law firm represents Hank Greenberg/AIG. Of the millions of attorneys in america, the administration had to choose one with direct connections to AIG? Really? Really.
Makes sense, after all, Richard Holbrooke was just recently on the BoD of AIG, so Neil needs the company of fellow AIGers. Can't have everyone (Diana Farrell, Gary Gensler, Mark Patterson, Robert Hormats, etc., etc.) be a Goldman Sucks personage...
Makes sense, after all, Richard Holbrooke was just recently on the BoD of AIG, so Neil needs the company of fellow AIGers. Can't have everyone (Diana Farrell, Gary Gensler, Mark Patterson, Robert Hormats, etc., etc.) be a Goldman Sucks personage...
In Detroit the question Rattner asked most was;
What is the real projected SAAR NA rate for light vehicles given the condition of our economy?
Answer: For CY2009 = below 10 Million.
The problem with the autos was their overhead relative to the US market share. No market, no sales, and if your overhead is too great, no solvency.
The real Rattner deal;
Chrysler:
First 4 Billion owed forgiven by the Treasury, perhaps up to 7 Billion, Ouch!!!.
From my standpoint the investment and equity share in Chrysler was primarily a stalling action, with Fiat being the eventual (well financed) fall guy. The administration has made it clear that there will be no further investment in Chrysler/Fiat. The big loser, other than the US tax payer, is the UAW VEBA (55% of stock). My prediction is that Chrysler will fail completely in 2010, and Fiat will just pick up some pieces, which is all it really wanted in the first place.
As Ron G stated,
"We would need to sell that stock. It's not one that we wanted to or not. And again, it won't be the UAW, it's the VEBA that will be the owner of the stock because the debt is owed to the VEBA."
If you recall Ron's interview, his was very controlled, but you could tell he was completely disgusted by the condition of Auto manufacturing in the US.
GM:
The rise of the creature from the black (debt) lagoon. The fast track bankruptcy money hole government monster, complete with the old managment. eek!
The Gov came in with Debtor in Possession financing and then, took on equity and debt, to Rattner's screams of "its alive". We can hear the faint sound of chains in the distance as GM haunts the Detroit landscape. This thing we call the new GM transcends any know US Corporate model, with an open ended contract.
Unless the SAAR gets above 12 Million and GM at 19% Market share, GM will need to institute more cuts in 2010. But this assume that management will take responsible actions, and look out for the long term health of the corporation. I am not too confident based on their track record.
Also Wagner was not fired, he just stepped down as CEO, as far I as know, he is still on the GM payroll, well really the US payroll.
Mark Beck
On a non-related note - nice afterhours moves by MAC.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Macerich-Provides-Updated-prnews-2125893237.html?x=0&.v=1
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Macerich-Announces-Proposed-prnews-3456245001.html?x=0&.v=1
Marla, any shot at a little R0: Knife the MAC action?
Rattner...hmmm, where did I write about him? Oh yeah, in my segment on chooching pension funds where I noted:
Hey, at least Mr. Rattner wasn't appointed a pensions czar! I know of many rats (no pun intended) in the pension industry who I suspect took kickbacks and used fraudulent accounting to "juice up" their returns. There is an old Greek saying, "he who has honey on his fingers, can't help licking them."
He was also on PBS News Hour this evening for a segment called "Behind GM". The interview went nicely until the Judy Woodruff asked him basically if he wanted to update the audience on the status of efforts to prove he is a crook. The video should show up here eventually: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html