Wow, that was quick. Even before we could get a hold of the new bailout bill, the name of the new “viability advisor” has emerged from the political fug hanging over Washington. And the man who will control the fate of America’s automakers is… Kenneth Feinberg. The MSM (e.g. AP) is touting the man who would be Czar as the “the lawyer oversaw the federal Sept. 11 victims’ compensation fund” (AP). Which is a strange, deeply foreboding background for this gig if you ask me. But you didn’t. So I asked Wikipedia to give me the inside dope on El Czarino. “Originally from Brockton, Massachusetts, he worked for five years as an administrative assistant and chief of staff for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, and as a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney General. Before founding his own firm, The Feinberg Group, in 1993, he was a founding partner at the Washington office of Kaye Scholer LLP.” Feinberg wasl also a key figure in other major compensation disputes, including the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the Dalkon Shield birth-control device.
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I’m hoping RF at least got a couple votes. Oh well, there’s always next year’s bailout.
The Washington revolving door revolveth.
Hey the guy is an expert in birth control. Maybe he can neuter those assholes.
“Czar” comes from the wrong period of Russian history to describe something related to this automotive bailout.
Start the TTACDW, the whole point of this blog’s DWs has been: product. The guy running the nation’s quasi-domestic auto operations is a lawyer/CFO type with no background in automobiles. Sigh. Think Datsun B210 with an electric motor and enough safety gadgetry to force a 0-60mph time measured in eons. Who’d a thunk? Goodbye Corvette and any other possible interesting vehicle. Sigh, is it too early to start drinking here on the West Coast?
The juxtaposition of the Bailout headline and a story about how the Russian Government is taking control of companies in Russia in this morning’s NYTimes was amusing.
@ no_slushbox
I believe it should be “General Secretary of American Leyland”
…any relation to a certain Stephen A. Feinberg of Cerberus fame?
Great. Just what the auto industry needs. Another lawyer telling them what to do. That out to fix it.
What’s with the fascination with czars? As has been pointed out previously, the Russians had them and they didn’t work out so well. Our “drug czar” hasn’t solved that problem. I see that an “energy czar” has been proposed – what’s the job of the Secretary of Energy? Why do we need another energy person?
A leftist ambulance chaser to dictate to an industry he knows nothing about. Soon we’ll be calling Trabant owners the lucky ones…
I’m willing to bet that nobody floated the idea of Roger Penske. Why have someone who knows the auto industry be in charge of a bailout, when we can put a lawyer in the job?
Did you know that insuring and litigating product liability is a bigger cost of building a car for GM than their hourly labor rate?
Maybe the solution to the Detroit 3’s cost structure is a national health plan funded with a 50% tax on attorneys’ fees.
http://www.motorobilia.com/2008/12/first-thing-we-do-lets-tax-all-lawyers.html
let’s not jump to conclusions here. I for one am willing to accept this man if for nothing else than a lack of knowledge pertaining to his intelligence and common sense. his not being connected to the industry is a plus in my eyes and it appears he is capable of dealing with issues of broad magnitude.
Is Wolfgang Bernhard really that busy?
I’ve heard him interviewed re the 9/11 compensation fund. He may not know anything about cars, but he’s smart as hell and prepared to say no if that’s where his analysis leaves him.
VerbalKint , agreed.
VerbalKint :
December 8th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
A leftist ambulance chaser to dictate to an industry he knows nothing about. Soon we’ll be calling Trabant owners the lucky ones…
Dead on…
And how many times did the 911 victims have to SUE before they got any of the “funds”? In fact, have they even gotten all of them yet?
Chief of staff for Teddy boy? What, was Teddy himself unavailable?
I’m confused by the ambulance chaser comments.
Are you guys saying this just because he’s a lawyer? (And if so, why would he be different than current/recent White House staff like Scooter Libby, Josh Bolten, Jim Nussle, Michael Chertoff, Tom Ridge, Michael Brown, Michael Astrue, who are all lawyers)?
Or is there specific info that this guy was a real ambulance chaser like Greta Van Susteren was?
Wolven: “What, was Teddy himself unavailable?”
er yeah, [cough] … [cough]
He has experience dealing with victims. Vets exposed to agent orange, 911 families, women harmed by the Dalcon Shield.
Who are the victims here? Taxpayers. The auto companies have cranked out stupid thirsty ugly SUVs that no one wants to buy except poser cowboys with small equipment. And who has to pay to crush the hangers full of hummers? We do. Is that fair? No.
So do you want a NASCAR driver watching out for your tax money? How about Brownie? Or, why not hire Blackwater? Perhaps they can disappear some union leaders. Why not ask one of our great financial CEOs from Wall Street? After all, everyone knows how smart they are.
The auto companies have cranked out stupid thirsty ugly SUVs that no one wants to buy except poser cowboys with small equipment.
Think highly of yourself, do you?
I think one of George Orwell’s writing tips is appropriate:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I’m pretty sure that you broke rules numbers 1 and 5 and probably the second clause of number 6. You also misspelled poseur.
I guess you would know.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/poser
poser
noun
1. a person who habitually pretends to be something he is not [syn: poseur]
Justin,
Lawyers proliferate on both sides of the aisle. Chris Dodd has a JD too. Frankly, I’m not sure that members of the bar, who have some privileges as officers of the court, should be allowed to run for public office.
As I pointed out already, the cost of product liability is a bigger cost component in the assembly of a new car than hourly labor.
Shakespeare was half right. The first thing we should do is tax the lawyers. Unfortunately, with lawyers controlling most legislatures in this country the chances of passing legislation unfavorable to attorneys is lower than the chances of finding pro bono representation when you really need it.
The lawyer background might not be so bad here…..
Let’s face it, whoever takes this position needs to be more up to speed on the legal side of the business then product design.
What’s the worse that can happen…“more body cladding for the new 2010 Pontiac Aztec II’
It’s been said before and I’ll say it again – When the living envy the dead – what do you have, that’s right, Business Zombie.
And that’s what GM is right now.
I guess you would know.
I never pretend to be something I’m not. I did, though, take 4 years of French, so I’ll use another borrow-word that accurately describes your preoccupation with SUVs and the size of cowboys’ genitals, cliché.
I don’t know where you live, but in America we like cowboys. They have a moral code, and do justice where no justice can be found. If that upsets smug folks who think that “victims” are the ultimate card in the moral superiority game, so be it.
Oh, and you forgot the obligatory slam at Halliburton.
What do you want to bet this Feinberg tool is trading in his Lexus/Mercedes/Bimmer tomorrow for a Ford Escape Hybrid? What a fuc*ing joke.
Everyone in here – and I’m not singling anyone out (mostly out of sloth) – needs to cut the crap. No more personal insults. We’re all obviously smart (or good enough at pretending to be smart) so discussions should be on the merits.
If you want to insult someone personally, make it a pro athlete or hollywood celeb.
Otherwise, I’m going to start deleting posts and sending warning emails and eventually banning people. I don’t want to do that, because I don’t get paid for it, but I will if I have no choice.
So pardon me for sounding a little naive here (hope I spelled ot right), but who would have been an ideal car czar? Assuming most of the reasonably smart ‘car industry’ folks are already in the industry, either earning or trying like hell to earn the salaries we pay C-Suite types, what does that leave? After reading article after article and post after post (most of which seem pretty spot-on) about how ‘Fortress Detroit’ is its own wors problem, what the NSFW except an outsider would work?
In the short term – and however it ends up working out, that’s what this job is designed for – how is a car guy or an engineer going to succeed? How is anything other than a background in shitty decisions about huge sums of money helpful? I know bupkis about Feinberg, but if the job had been given to an industry type it would have been a complete sham.
Jack Welch?
Probably wouldn’t work for a dollar a day though.
This guy actually came to speak at my law school – he was (or at least came across as) thoughtful and mindful of big-picture consequences. Here’s hoping that he doesn’t cave in.
Step back for a second, folks.
The government loan terms are very similar to what occurs in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In Chapter 11, the filing company is supposed to put together a business plan, and a sufficient number of creditors need to agree to new repayment terms, otherwise it goes into Chapter 7 liquidation.
So you need to look at other aspects how Chapter 11 works in order to understand what is going on here. During a Chapter 11 proceeding, the court will appoint a “receiver” who is in theory a neutral party, but who in practice was probably selected by the largest creditors and who’s job is to make sure that the borrowers get as much as possible.
Feinberg is playing the role of a receiver in this not-quite-Chapter-11 petition. As is the case with a bankruptcy receiver, they are often attorneys, not industry experts. Their jobs are to have a BS detector that they use to protect the lenders.
A problem with appointing industry experts in this case is that the relationships are so incestuous that you might end up with conflicts of interest. You don’t want Bob Lutz’s friends doing this job; you want outsiders who will not fall for their excuses and demand a workable plan for repayment.
At this point, the government cannot expect to be repaid what it is going to be owed. There needs to be someone to protect the government from these bozos in Detroit who would default on loans from their mothers if given half a chance.
My hope is that he is a first-class jerk that makes them regret the day that they decided to fly to Washington with their hands out. This experience really needs to suck, so that no one else in Corporate America is inspired to follow in their footsteps.
It’s hard to tell whether not being a car guy is good or bad. One of the not entirely unsung but still often overlooked businessmen, Ely Calloway, is a good example. His career was in textiles and wines. He was 63 when he bought an interest in a tiny club manufacturer named Hickory Sticks and changed the name to Calloway. Although he had always played golf, he had never run a company producing golf products. So, not having been ‘in’ the industry, in the strictest sense of the word, might not be a bad thing.