Inside Baseball: Rattner > Quadrangle > Cerberus > MAXIM?

Steve Rattner recently surrendered his position as the head of The Presidential Task Force on Automobiles (PTFOA). Seems Steve-a-rino must attend to a little mess down in The Empire State. More specifically, NY AG Andrew Cuomo suspects that Rattner’s Quadrangle Group paid a $1.1 million bribe to political consultant Hank Morris to secure megabucks from the New York Pension Board. The Treasury Department immediately spun Rattner’s resignation as a normal part of the PTFOA’s new role as Chrysler and GM’s more silent partner: “Steve’s decision to leave is the first step in a planned scaledown of the task force and there will of course be more departures in the future. It was always part of the plan to downsize once Chrysler and GM emerged from bankruptcy.” So how many other bureaucrats on the [now] 24-member PTFOA have left government employ? None. Meanwhile . . .

Rattner’s Quadrangle mob have jumped out of bed with the same group that the PTFOA allowed to maintain control of Chrysler Financial Services—despite running the Chrysler mothership into the ground without assuming ANY financial liability for the American automaker’s collapse. Yup, Cerberus.

Two years ago, Rattner’s Quadrangle group formed a company called Alpha Media to buy “lad mags” MAXIM and STUFF, and music title BLENDER from UK publishing maverick (a.k.a. “eccentric”) Ron Dennis. Alpha Media shelled-out $250 million for the three titles. Quadrangle’s “stake” in the deal: a $100 million loan from Cerberus.

As the PTFOA’s Chrysler “rescue” proved, Quadrangle and Cerberus are BFFs. (Not to mention Cerberus’ cozy relationship with The Fed, which green-lighted a last-minute lender-into-banker billion dollar bailout for Cerberus’ GMAC debacle.) But this Alpha Media deal went south faster than a migrating flock of supersonic ducks.

As the mag biz continued its downwards trajectory, Alpha Media folded Stuff into MAXIM. Blender dried-up and died. Thanks to the ongoing rise of the Internet and the sudden decline in MAXIM’s ad revenues (468 vs. 249 ad pages in the first six months of 2005 vs. 2009), the Alpha dog is on its last legs. As The Post reports, Quadrangle has now defaulted on its Alpha Media debt, leaving Cerberus holding the bag. [joke deleted]

Yes, the company that tried to strip and flip Chrysler is now running a magazine based on tits and ass. More to the point, Steve Rattner used other people’s money to take a stake in a failing, outmoded industry, just before the market tanked. Then walked away without a scratch went the deal went bad. Sound familiar?