Car Czar: Romney Rhetoric On Auto Rescue Is “Utter Fantasy”

Mitt Romney’s rhetoric when discussing the Obama administration’s rescue of the domestic auto industry is “utter fantasy,” according to Steven Rattner — the man who administered much of the program.

Writing in the New York Times, Rattner says that Romney “evidently hasn’t felt a need to be consistent or specific as to what should have been done to address the collapse of the auto industry starting in late 2008.”

Countering Romney’s assertion at the time that a “managed bankruptcy” financed by private industry could have rescued GM and Chrysler, Rattner explains that “in late 2008 and early 2009, when G.M. and Chrysler had exhausted their liquidity, every scrap of private capital had fled to the sidelines.”

If the administration had followed Romney’s op-ed that said “let Detroit go Bankrupt,” Rattner writes that “More than a million jobs would have been lost, at least for a time. Michigan and the entire industrial Midwest would have been devastated.”

GM recently announced a 2011 profit of $7.6 billion, while Chrysler is also now profitable.

VIA New York Times