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Obama puts 31 year old with no auto industry experience, or any business experience, in charge of GM. Is this a joke? Oh – and GM filed for bankruptcy.

The Wall Street Journal reports on GM’s bankruptcy filing today. Full story here.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy early Monday, marking the humbling of an American icon that once dominated the global car industry and setting up a high-stakes gamble for U.S. taxpayers. (See the Chapter 11 filing.)

President Obama is expected to defend General Motors' bankruptcy plan and the massive bailout. The reorganization plan will call for a huge infusion of U.S. tax dollars, but the White House hopes the company will survive. Video courtesy of Fox News.

The bankruptcy filing, made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, marks the climax of a lengthy debate over the auto maker's future after it sought a bailout from the U.S. government in December to stay alive. In the end, GM couldn't complete its restructuring out of court and filed for bankruptcy-court protection to get billions more in aid from U.S. taxpayers.

The question now facing 56,000 auto workers, 3,600 GM dealers and the Obama administration: Will it work?

WSJ also covers potential conflicts in government role:

Even after nine months of extraordinary government intervention, the scope and complexity of the General Motors Corp. rescue present a thicket of conflicts unlike any seen before in Washington.

The federal government is likely within weeks to emerge as the principal owner of a storied U.S. corporation whose factories and products touch the lives of tens of millions of Americans. It will simultaneously serve as the company's regulator, tax collector, customer, pension backstop and lender.

Now on to that White House auto task force. The New York Times writes about the 31 year old Brian Deese,who never worked in the auto industry, that is now Barack’s lead man on the auto task force. What? Who? Are you kidding me? No I’m not and here’s the story at The New York Times.

WASHINGTON — It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

Brian Deese, who interrupted his law school career, is the little-seen force behind the revamping of the American auto industry.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”

Amazing. Here is his bio at Wikipedia:

He graduated from Middlebury College in 2000 with a degree in Political Science^[5] and is now on leave from Yale Law School.^[6] Previously, he was a senior policy analyst for economic policy at the Center for American Progress.^[7] Brian also worked as a research assistant at the Center for Global Development

So Brian has never worked for a real company. He went to college, worked for a non-profit, back to college, then to another non-profit group and now works for the government. And He is giving advice as to what to do about a real company that employees tens of thousands of people? Is this a joke? It must be and the punch line is GM files for bankruptcy and the tax payers get stuck with the bill.

 

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