You are incorrect when you say that the Cerberus boss was either completely dishonest or completely incompetent. He was, in fact, completely dishonest and completely incompetent.

“If you were stripping the company of its assets you would sell off entire product lines.”

You certainly would, if someone wanted that at the price you needed to make a profit.

How does marketing your product lines to other companies while continuing to market them yourself constitute strip and flip? If you were stripping the company of its assets you would sell off entire product lines. Notice that Chrysler didn’t sell the Stow-N-Go feature to VW, they kept that for themselves. That indicates to me that they’re still serious about competing in the minivan segment.

As for the new Ram, development was certainly well under way when Daimler unloaded the company, but it looks like Cerberus did a very conscientious job of bringing it to market, sweating the details in a way that Chrysler, like Detroit in general, has sometimes neglected to do recently.

That is maybe a conflict of interest for him, since he did not rely completely on his own money, but was using other peoples money to resurrect the brand. At the end some rich guy(s) will loose a lot of money, who new what he(they) were doing.

When you look at Ford/GM the picture is completely different – those are public companies. The speed of deterioration indicates that either management was completely incompetent or completely dishonest. I wish this case was argued in the court: “Your honor, my client Rick Wagoner, has been CEO for 8 years and is a complete schmuck. He never lied, he just an idiot for the job”

The Ram was well under way before Cerberus took over Chrysler, and they had already started the strip and flip process, marketing their minivan and truck lines to other automakers and cutting costs and, by many accounts, all development spending.

Cerberus’ offer to trade future profits is quite generous. They get a nice $7B check to put into their bank accounts before pulling the plug on Chyrsler.

You’d think that if they were going to part out the company they would have started the process by now, but instead they have made a few strong product development moves that suggest some degree of commitment to remaining a going concern (e.g., the new Ram).

What Cerberus didn’t anticipate, obviously, was the implosion of the entire auto industry that suddenly turned a difficult situation into an impossible one. It’s hard to imagine any scenario at this point in which more than a few bits and pieces of Chrysler survive, but I think it’s entirely plausible that Cerberus originally bought the company with the intention of keeping it going.

Whatever you do, don’t throw me in that briar patch!

It would be interesting to see a full disclosure of what else populates the Series IV hedge fund in the interest of a full disclosure before a single penny of taxpayers money gets promised.

Since Chrysler is a LLC, bankruptcy is the other option.

I could only see the Feds giving them a loan if Cerberus gives them a guarantee on the repayment from their other funds. Or if Cerberus puts up $ for $ the amount the feds loan them.

The idea of bailing our a very wealthy private equity fund is insane.