President Obama the Bully
Peter A. Weinberg and Joseph R. Perella are part of a band of Wall Street renegades — “a small group of speculators,” President Obama called them Thursday — who helped bankrupt Chrysler.
That, anyway, is the Washington line.
In fact, Mr. Weinberg and Mr. Perella, with sparkling Wall Street pedigrees, are the epitome of white-shoe investment bankers. And their boutique investment bank, a latecomer to Chrysler, played only a small role in the slow-motion wreck of the Detroit carmaker.
But now the two men, along with a handful of other financiers, are being blamed for precipitating the bankruptcy of an American icon. As Chrysler’s fate hung in the balance Wednesday night, this group refused to bend to the Obama administration and accept steep losses on their investments while more junior investors, including the United Automobile Workers union, were offered favorable terms.
In a rare flash of anger, the president scolded the group Thursday as Chrysler, its options exhausted, filed for bankruptcy protection. “I don’t stand with those who held out when everyone else is making sacrifices,” Mr. Obama said.
It’s not Obama’s place to dictate what companies get in return when a company is bankrupt. This is the purpose of a bankruptcy court. We are a nation of laws and President Obama, a lawyer, should know better! He’s to busy being a bully to those “evil” hedge funds and lenders that invested in Chrysler in the first place. (Even if they are our mutual funds, retirement pensions and more in the end Obama just has to have somebody to bully.)
