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Overhaul: An Insider's Account Of The Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue Of The Auto Industry (2010)

by Steven Rattner(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0547443218 (ISBN13: 9780547443218)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: I had studied the outcome of 'Overhaul' in a class but was interested in learning more about the process of the historic effort to save the US auto industry from collapse. Rattner's account is a combination memoir of his time leading this effort and reportage of all of the events swirling around the industry after the crisis (Rattner was a journalist before getting into finance). He does a great job explaining the significance of technical issues in business, finance, and bankruptcy, and also provides an insider's view of the various personalities involved in these events. The leadership of GM and Congress come off particularly badly. I was a little surprised that Rattner didn't spend more time on the significance of the decision to tweak the norms of bankruptcy preced... moreent to get GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy. At the time, unorthodox decisions, such as violating Absolute Priority in giving significant equity to union pension interests over secured creditors who weren't paid in full (banks who took TARP money), were justified by the exigencies of the financial crisis. Rattner does a nice job of explaining Team Auto's process and thinking at the time on these tough issues and dispels some of the notion that decisions with respect to the automakers and the unions were purely political.
review 2: Mr. Rattner provides an 'insider" view of the bailout of GM and Chrysler - the decisions being made, the challenges encountered. As expected, it was well written (since the author use to write for a newspaper), and illustrates the amount of work staffers do to make "things" happen (and Mr. Rattner was a very high ranking staffer). The book barely mentioned the investigation into the conflict of interest in Mr. Rattner's holdings. Well done and interesting. less

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