Thomas Luria

Chrysler Creditor Hedge Funds Take Courageous Stand Upholding Consititution, Beg Judge For Anonymity

Moe Tkacik | May 4, 2009, 4:52PM

Last week a group of hedge funds that had invested in Chrysler bonds "came out with guns blazing", in hedge fund terms anyway, against the administration's 33 cent on-the-dollar settlement offer, forcing the automaker into bankruptcy in spite of the president's stern verbal appeals for everyone involved to make a "sacrifice." But most observers agreed the holdouts were not likely to get much higher than 30 cents in any bankruptcy court, and some of them undoubtedly would have made a profit under the terms of the Obama deal, as this Bloomberg story points out: in March, after all, Chrysler bonds traded as low as 13 cents.

But the crusade was about so much more than money, the holdouts insisted. By Friday they had organized into a group they dubbed the "non-TARP lenders" -- to differentiate themselves from Chrysler's biggest creditors, four big banks which had, like all big banks, received TARP funding. One hedge fund manager, Geoffrey Gwin -- who officially joined the holdouts Friday -- even allowed a Wall Street Journal reporter to bear witness to the "turmoil" plaguing him as he wrestled with his own decision on the matter.* And a preliminary objection filed today in the bankruptcy court on behalf of the group calls the administration's bankruptcy proposals "patently illegal" and "not proposed in good faith" in a "tainted sales process" that is "unconstitutional."

So why are so few of the holdouts willing to go on the record upholding the Constitution on this weighty matter? Today in court the non-TARP lenders' chief counsel Tom Lauria, pleaded with the court to keep his clients' firm names sealed, according to the Detroit Free-Press.:

Read more »