White House Intimidation?

Barack Obama continues to show the way Chicago politics works.  Except this is the Community Organizer side coming out which is the alter ego of the Richard Dailey wing of Chicago thuggery.

American Thinker reports on a story by Jake Tapper of ABC News–one of the few guys in the White House Press corps willing to ask the tough questions–that will throw most people for a loop.  The White House apparently threatened to sick the White House Press corps on a boutique investment firm if they continued to oppose the Chrysler deal:

A leading bankruptcy attorney representing hedge funds and money managers told ABC News Saturday that Steve Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration’s Auto Industry Task Force, threatened one of the firms, an investment bank, that if it continued to oppose the administration’s Chrysler bankruptcy plan, the White House would use the White House press corps to destroy its reputation.

The White House and a spokesperson for the investment bank in question challenged the accuracy of the story.

“The charge is completely untrue,” said White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, “and there’s obviously no evidence to suggest that this happened in any way.”

Thomas Lauria, Global Practice Head of the Financial Restructuring and Insolvency Group at White & Case, told ABC News that Rattner suggested to an official of the boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners that officials of the Obama White House would embarrass the firm for opposing the Obama administration plan, which President Obama announced Thursday, and which requires creditors to accept roughly 29 cents on the dollar for an estimated $6.8 billion owed by Chrysler.

Lauria first told the story, without naming Rattner, to Frank Beckmann on Detroit’s WJR-AM radio.

Perella Weinberg Partners, Lauria said, “was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That’s how hard it is to stand on this side of the fence.”

A Perella Weinberg Partners spokesperson told ABC News on Sunday that “The firm denies Mr. Lauria’s account of events.”* The spokesperson would not elaborate.

Of course they denied the story.  But this follows a pattern of corporate intimidation which is the province of the Community Organizer class led by ACORN.

ACORN has had it out for banks and investment firms for many years.  Using the sledgehammer of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), ACORN intimidated banks to make bad loans for at least two decades.  There few instances where they directly or indirectly inserted themselves into the negotiations of bank mergers working to force banks to expand their portfolios of these risky loans as part of the find deal.

• 1994:  ACORN put a huge amount of outside pressure on Norwest Bank to make about $552 million dollars of  CRA targeted loans as part of its deal to purchase First United Bank Group. “That part of the deal is a real CRA-oriented commitment,” Crabtree said. “It’s the cost of making an acquisition.”
• 1995:  ACORN successfully inserted itself into merger talks between Feet Financial Group and Shawmut National Corp.
• 1998:  ACORN inserted itself into merger talks with Banc One and First Chicago.

There are dozens more examples where the Community Organizer Class used intimidation to change the lending practices of banks under the cover of a federal law, CRA.  A well-funded activist group using this law was able to bring huge banks to their knees.

Now that the Community Organizer in Chief is in the White House, the power to use not only laws he can influence Congress to pass, but the influence of the White House itself to bring pressure upon companies and individuals who dare to question his agenda.

President Obama said in the announcement of the Chrysler bankruptcy that “a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.”  That was a lie.  Perella Weinberg Partners–apparently one of those firms–was opposed to the pennies on the dollar deal the White House wanted to enforce.

Now that Community Organizing has come to the White House, you had better watch your back if you find you have an investment in an industry Obama wants to target next.