Yesterday's piece by Mitt proves yet again how tone deaf he is & probably will define his loss in Michigan's primary.
Obama car czar calls Romney clueless on auto bailout
By David Guralnick
The former head of President Barack Obama's auto industry task force said today in an interview that if Mitt Romney seriously believes GM and Chrysler would have survived without federal financing in 2008 and 2009, then Romney doesn't understand how bad the financial crash and credit market freeze then were.
Steven Rattner, a Democratic supporter who ran a private investment firm before signing on to help rescue GM and Chrysler, called Romney's position on the auto bailout "ridiculous … a complete denial of the facts."
Romney, who's running for the GOP presidential nomination and is on the ballot for Michigan's Feb. 28 primary, wrote an op-ed in today's Detroit News reiterating points he's made about the bailout: namely, that a "managed" bankruptcy using private financing would have been better than billions of dollars in taxpayer financing. Romney called the bailout "crony capitalism on a grand scale.'
He also took the government to task for cutting deals that gave the UAW a stake in the car companies. The op-ed piece came as Detroit-born Romney -- whose father, George, led the old American Motors and also was a three-term Michigan governor -- today released the ad above emphasizing his auto industry and Michigan roots.
Rattner's task force struck the deals that led to the managed bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. More than $80-billion in taxpayer funds were involved, though much has been paid back and the government expects to recoup more.
"These companies would have closed their doors and liquidated" without government money, Rattner said. He explained that at the height of the financial collapse there simply wasn't private financing available, meaning that the companies would have shut down and been sold in pieces. "We took every phone call, we made as many outgoing calls as we could think of."
Romney, Rattner said, may have made his living as a venture capitalist and attended Harvard Business School, but his theories on saving the auto companies make no sense and "would get somebody a C-grade at best at the Harvard Business School."
Romney also had hard words for Rattner in the op-ed, calling him a "politically connected and ethically challenged Obama-campaign contributor."
Rattner said it's nothing he hadn't heard before and didn't affect his opinion of Romney's ideas. "He's trying to sharpen his conservative chops," said Rattner, believing that an anti-bailout position has become "a litmus test" among Republicans. "He's afraid of being perceived as a moderate."
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/02/obama-car-czar-calls-romney-clueless-on-auto-bailout/1?loc=interstitialskip
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