Over at Hit & Run, our colleagues report that at least one creditor is claiming to have been directly threatened by the White House for not going along with the terms of the Chrysler deal. Steve Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration’s Auto Industry Task Force, apparently told the financial group representing Perella Weinberg Partners, that if it continued to oppose the administration’s plan and not eat the crow it was being served and pretend that it was cake like 70% of the other creditors on TARP-dole were doing, the White House would use the D.C. press corps to destroy its reputation.
Elliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York, had made a career out of using precisely such tactics to destroy companies and individuals that refused to do his bidding. Perhaps the White House has hired him. Afterall, his blogging career at Slate surely can’t be generating enough income to support his extra curricular forays at D.C.’s Mayflower.