Saturday, May 02, 2009

Obama uses WH press corps as threat against Chrysler investors

If this is true -- and I have no reason to believe otherwise -- Obama is taking the Chicago way to a whole new level.

at Hot Air:

Obama uses WH press corps as threat against Chrysler investors
posted at 11:15 am on May 2, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

An attorney representing several Chrysler bondholders accused the Obama administration of intimidating his clients by issuing threats of public humiliation if they opposed their brokered deal to resolve the automaker’s debts. Speaking to WJR, Thomas Lauria said that the White House called the bondholders “vultures” for insisting on their rights as senior creditors and told them that the Obama administration would use the White House press corps to attack them in the media. Corky Boyd has the transcript (also via HA reader Geoff A):

Lauria: Let me tell you it’s no fun standing on this side of the fence opposing the President of the United States. In fact, let me just say, people have asked me who I represent. That’s a moving target. I can tell you for sure that I represent one less investor today than I represented yesterday. One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That’s how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence.

Beckman: Was that Perella Weinberg?

Lauria: That was Perella Weinberg.


Glenn Reynolds wonders how the White House press corps will feel about being used as an arm of the administration to beat its opposition into submission. My guess? Enchanted, with just a couple of exceptions. He also wonders whether they will show the slightest inclination to ask about these allegations. So far, it looks like the Sounds of Silence on the WHPC dial rather than We’re Not Gonna Take It.

Bear in mind that this is one attorney operating in his client’s interest, and attorneys do like to make media waves by fighting cases on the evening news and the front page before they fight them in court. However, the WHPC should be asking whether they’re getting played by the Obama administration — and consider the strong possibility that they’ve allowed themselves to be put in that position.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow.... him and hugo chavez have alot more in common than I thought.


he's developing into quite a petty dictator.

as he asks (read demands) that others fall on thier financial sword for him.

revereridesagain said...

It's getting to the point where I can't re-read Atlas Shrugged fast enough to keep up. I keep getting to outrageous, seemingly over-the-top stuff Rand wrote about and Obamugabe's doing it already. Atlas first-timers are going to think they're in a time warp. Again.

Anonymous said...

LOL . . .revere, same here. My spouse and I have the audio version of Atlas on our digital audio players. My spouse won't read beyond the early chapters - overwhelmed by the frequent parallels to the totally avoidable insanity of today's events.
Anyone know of a Galt's Gulch we can move to?

midnight rider said...

Anon. -- Contact Epa :>)

Always On Watch said...

The White House has denied, of course.

But, then again, the White House denied that BHO's bow to the Saudi king was a bow. Heh.

TrueBlue said...

This is a tempest in a small, cracked Republican teapot. I notice that the blog that started this "thuggery" accusation has now stopped allowing comments. It based its accusation on the words of an interested party -- Perella Whineberg's lawyer -- without ever noting the party's interest, and without ever even bothering to examine how bankruptcy law is structured and applied.

The issue here is Perella Whineberg's desire to be paid 50 cents on the dollar for its bonds, rather than 29 cents on the dollar offered by the Treasury. The reason Treasury is involved is because Chrysler can't obtain private "debtor in possession" financing for its bankruptcy. Treasury is playing that role, and he who provides DIP financing always has a big role in bankruptcy proceedings.

Virtually every bankruptcy features some fighting among creditors over pieces of a pie that, by definition, isn't big enough to give everyone a full slice. The biggest fights are often between different classes of creditors, and in those fights you will often see "senior" creditors howling over not being paid as much as they think they deserve relative to "junior" creditors.

That was the case here. In addition to Perella Whineberg, two other senior creditors (Oppenheimer and Stairstep) were so-called "holdouts" from a settlement agreed to be scores of other creditors. In bankruptcies, holdouts usually don't do very well. The judge sometimes tosses them an extra crust of bread, but not always.

As the DIP financing provider, the Treasury wants Chrysler to remain an ongoing entity. Its interest is to produce agreement among the creditors so there won't be a prolonged court fight that might endanger the entity's ability to repay the DIP financing. So, it wants to corral the holdouts.

Perella Whineberg was corralled last Friday; it issued a press release to that effect. But it also trotted out its lawyer to claim that the White House had forced it into agreement by threatening to ruin the firm's reputation. The White House categorically denied that version, something that the blog you quoted never mentioned before abruptly closing its comment section on Sunday morning.

We don't know what was said by the White House to Perella Whineberg. It's unlikely that anyone threatened Whineberg with the White House press corps, but it's not beyond imagining that the White House pointed to President Obama's statements and told Whineberg that they were only the beginning of what they'd face if the holdouts continued to hold out and jeopardized the ongoing operations of Chrysler. After all, the taxpayers are now on the hook for $4 billion in DIP financing, and it's the government's job to protect that investment against greedy graspers like Whineberg.

In any case, the idea that "the rule of law" was ignored is outrageous. The Chrysler bankruptcy, and the recent machinations, is par for the course. Perella Whineberg was trying to get a better deal, and failed. What really sticks out here is Perella Whineberg's utter lack of class and professionalism. They are the personification of the kind of sore losers and manipulative squirrels that the Republican Party has become.