Wow it’s morning so that means Barack Obama is giving televised remarks about the latest failed giant business he’s buying us for Ramadan. General Motors! “The collapse of these companies would’ve been devastating to America,” etc., yes we know, “and it would be good for American workers and American manufacturing and good for America’s economy” if, heh heh, GM didn’t have to pay all its debts. Let’s live-blog this by liveblogging, now! MORE »

Many blame last week’s Chrysler bankruptcy on the fact that Chrysler is a shit company. They are wrong! It was really a group of hedge funds, holding large swaths of Chrysler debt, that rejected the administration’s settlement offer of a 33 cents-on-the-dollar payout and thus threw the company into its current quickie “nooner” of a Chapter 11 filing. These twenty-ish hedge funds — who call themselves, retardedly, the “Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders,” making them Moral — are trying to score a better deal in bankruptcy court. These terrible people! SO TERRIBLE are these people that they filed a motion in court to have their names sealed, because apparently, what’s this, the public is mad at them for bankrupting a massive company out of greed? They’ve received death threats! And as the Non-TARP Cocksuckers’ court motion reveals, the threats have come from… dumb slob commenters on the Washington Post website. MORE »

Remember how Barack Obama doesn’t want to own all these companies, and he’s so tired of having to be CEO of basically everything, and really he just wants to have his wars and play basketball? Well, today is a new day, and Obama is now making Chrysler go bankrupt. But it’s not Chrysler’s fault! It’s not the unions’ fault. Like every bad thing, it is the fault of speculators, stock-jobbers, and other “hedge funds.” Let’s liveblog his speech! MORE »

• QUITTERS: Chrysler will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after all. A small group of creditors didn’t want to negotiate on Chrysler’s $6.9 billion of secured debt, so now a judge will decide how much they get. Chrysler will still be teaming up with Fiat, though, so KEEP BUYING CHRYSLERS at the breakneck volume you’ve been buying them for years. [AP]

Back when George Bush was the 36th best president of the United States, he suggested that the incoming administration appoint a Benevolent Despot Emperor of Automobiles, colloquially known as a “car czar,” to tend to the heaping pile of unsold inventory and feces that is the American automotive industry. And it seemed like Barack Obama would appoint this czar, in deference to tradition. MORE »

• UGH: “DETROIT — Chrysler says it will close all 30 of its manufacturing plants for a month starting Friday.” It’ll be like a vacation for auto workers, except they won’t travel anywhere and will enter poverty. We just couldn’t afford that $14 billion loan! [AP]

Reporter David Leonhardt at your liberal elitist rag the New York Times has a little thingy today about how nobody wants to buy American cars these days, and this is why Detroit finds itself in such an awkward no-cash-havin’ situation. While it is true that nobody wants to buy American cars, it is also true that nobody wants to buy any cars, Japanese, Korean, German, whatever, and your editor, after doing a fair amount of crapping on Detroit lately, has begun to see the error of her ways. MORE »

Much-loathed former plywood salesman Robert Nardelli to lead new all-American Chrysler; Lee Iaccoca sadly shakes head, dives back into swimming pool full of Congressional-loan-guarantee-derived cash.