CLEAR AS MUD

I was going to talk about the up-coming G20 meeting and the Geitner Plan--and I will--but the events of the week-end call for a bit of a detour for although they may seem unrelated the decisions made by the administration may have shed a bit of light as to how they will proceed in the future.

This morning The Leader once again went on tv to talk motorcars. "Let me make this clear, we have no intention of running General Motors..." All we are going to do is fire the chairman, restructure the board, reinvent the strategic plan and in the mean time tell Chrysler to do a deal with Fiat within the next 30 to 60 days. Uh huh. The Leader appears to think this is arms length. In the midst of this little diversion from the Endless Campaign, Our Hero announced that the banks are going to need more money, Huh? Forty years or so ago, one of the best sports writers (or any kind of writer for that matter) Jimmy Breslin, wrote a book on the first year of the New York Mets entitled, "Can't anybody here play this game?" Where is Jimmy when you need him? If you aren't confused (and possibly scared to death) at this stage of the game it's because you haven't been listening. The administration's pronouncements of late seem to be a completely disjointed streams of consciousness with no coherency nor sense of plan with either a lack of regard as to the possible consequences or a total lack of understanding of the same. I spent a week one night with Jimmy in an East Side gin mill, but that's another story.

Imagine, placing Chrysler in a negotiating position with a non-American counterparty and giving them 30 days to do a deal. Now place yourself in the position of Fiat. Would you simply sit back and say, "Ima tink Ima gonna wait." Sure you would; that is unless you look at the fact that Chrysler has already taken The Leader's penny at which point you might say, "Ima no wanna no part of dis," and run like hell the other way. If Nardelli and his private equity bosses don't run lickety split into Chapter 11, I would be very surprised.

As for the case of GM. Remarkably, some of the talking heads are mouthing that this is really great because it shows how "tough" The Leader and his administration really are and how they are going to protect the public purse. I have a somewhat different view which holds that reality has finally caught up with the intense desire to protect the UAW at all costs and the next 60 days are going to be devoted to doing just that in a "pre-packaged" bankruptcy. To be honest, I have no idea what a pre-packaged bankruptcy is but I suspect it's something like all parties going in to court and telling the judge that we are all in agreement that this should be the restructuring plan. Now the last time I looked, GM operated in about 50 countries, every one of the 50 states, had uncountable subsidiaries and multiple thousands of supplier contracts not to mention equity and debt holders at multiple levels os seniority. Of course the Congress will have nothing to say about this either. Sixty days will bring us to the first of June. The weather will be nice by then. We can all pull out our lawn chairs, a case of suds in the cooler, sit in the sun and watch this one unfold because it's going to be better than a twi-nighter at Wrigley. While all of this was going on, Honda announced a new car to compete with the Prius which doesn't quite match Prius' MPG but is bigger, faster and has some pretty neat features. While the pricing is not certain, it appears that the top of the line, the car with all the bells and whistles will sell for under $27,000, including tax, tip and recappable tire. Next time someone gets a chance to communicate with The Leader at some televised town meeting, will you point out to him that Detroit can't MAKE a car for that price much less sell it at a profit.

So, what does this mean for Our Hero and his plan? Wellllll, if I were running a bank, would I really want to get involved with this mob where the deal changes by the hour and despite protestations of non-involvement, they appear to be simply idle comments made at the spur of the moment. And what of this up-coming "stress test" ...(doesn't that remind you of Al Gore's , "Lock Box?") GOD! Seems as though Our Hero has already made up his mind as to what he is going to find. And wouldn't you be wondering if there might be a pay-off at the end to another of the administration's favorite entities...Democrats run hedge funds as well and gave copious amounts to The Leader's campaign. And as to the real formulation of the plan and its structure: wouldn't you wonder about...

But that is for tomorrow. Stay tuned.