Remember when folks were all talking about the need to push GM through a pre-pack before the Feds got involved? Remember how Obama and the Senators sort of picked up on it? Yeah, forget it; it’s just money:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/business/09auto.html
Some concepts – the difference between enterprise value and market value, the difference between Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 – just don’t seem to be explicable to the American public. And for most people there is absolutely no reason to know them. The challenge, however, seems to be that most people are not even aware that there is a distinction they should know, so they feel completely competent to have an opinion on what will happen in “bankruptcy” without realizing they have an entirely different process in mind.
John McCain was a somewhat serious presidential candidate without knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam – not the theological distinctions, mind you, but the existence of two violently antagonistic sects – so having an opinion before understanding the concepts is hardly rare. But Dodd and Obama…come on, folks, you’re smarter than this…
