{"id":193506,"date":"2008-12-11T00:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/11\/is-cerberus-pulling-a-scam-on-the-congress-with-chrysler\/"},"modified":"2008-12-11T00:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T05:05:00","slug":"is-cerberus-pulling-a-scam-on-the-congress-with-chrysler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/11\/is-cerberus-pulling-a-scam-on-the-congress-with-chrysler\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Cerberus Pulling a Scam on the Congress With Chrysler?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think that the most detailed analysis of this is by Dan Gerstein, who is a a political communications consultant, and was, &#8220;Communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and as a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns,&#8221; so we know that he&#8217;s a professional liar (that&#8217;s what a political communications consultant is), and that he associates with people with no sense of decency (Lieberman), so it should be read with that caveat, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/opinions\/2008\/12\/09\/chrysler-cerberus-bailout-oped-cx_dg_1210gerstein.html\">his explanation of just how Cerberus is taking the taxpayer to the cleaners<\/a> is the clearest and most concise explanation. (I&#8217;ll have alternate links below)<\/p>\n<p>The issues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cerberus is chock full of Republican Party apparachicks, including Former Bush Secretary of the Treasury John Snow, who personally lobbied Hank Paulson to, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/12\/06\/business\/06chrysler.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;pagewanted=all\">Salvage Cerberus\u2019s investments in Detroit<\/a>,&#8221; additional politically connected lobbyiests and corporate officers include:<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Bush I VP Dan Quayle<\/li>\n<li>Former Sen. John Breaux (a Dem, but very much a DINO)<\/li>\n<li>Former Bush legislative liaison David Hobbs<\/li>\n<li>Uber-Lobbyist Billy J. Cooper<\/li>\n<li>Arnold I. Havens, a former general counsel of the Treasury Department<\/li>\n<li> Christopher A. Smith, former chief of staff in the Treasury<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Conservative estimates are the Cerberus manages somewhere around $30 billion, so they have the wherewithal to float a loan to Chrysler.<\/li>\n<li>I think that the likely truth is that they don&#8217;t want to back Chrysler.  They bought it from Mercedes Benz in the hopes of a quick sale to GM, classic flip and flee.  Certainly the reports that they are <a href=\"http:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/Chrysler_may_be_buying_time_to_sell_itself\/articleshow\/3816588.cms\">trying for a quick sale to a Chinese auto manufacturer<\/a> supports this.<\/li>\n<li>A number of Congressmen, most notably Senator Grassley of Iowa, are <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/21668\/grassley-wonders-when-the-socialism-will-end\">demanding detailed information on the financial status of Cerberus<\/a>, equity warrants being sort of like stock, but are not stock, since Chrysler is private.<\/li>\n<li>They also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freep.com\/article\/20081210\/BUSINESS01\/812100386\/1210\/BUSINESS\">have 51% ownership of GMAC<\/a>, the auto lending firm spun off from GM, which means that they are getting taxpayer money twice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On the bright side, what just passed <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/news\/newsfeeds\/articles\/djf500\/200812101225DOWJONESDJONLINE000700_FORTUNE5.htm\">requires Cerberus to put up equity warrants in exchange for the loans<\/a>, equity warrants are kind of like stocks, but only for private firms, which have no stock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think that the most detailed analysis of this is by Dan Gerstein, who is a a political communications consultant, and was, &#8220;Communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and as a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns,&#8221; so we know that he&#8217;s a professional liar (that&#8217;s what a political communications consultant &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1108,998,970,1020],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-industry","category-congress","category-corruption","category-legislation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}