Last week, US President Barack Obama thanked everyone from unions to executives for working to keep Chrysler LLC alive while blaming “a small group of speculators” for forcing the automaker into bankruptcy. “A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout,” Obama said yesterday in Washington before Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection last Friday. Now, the US government and Chrysler plan to use bankruptcy to compel the dissidents, all secured creditors, to go along with a plan to create a more viable carmaker in partnership with Italy’s Fiat SpA. In lashing out at the holdouts, Obama is attempting to rally the public behind his efforts to rescue the automaker, said Stuart Rothenberg, a Washington-based political analyst. “In the real world, you have good guys and bad guys, and at the moment, auto executives, hedge-fund managers and bankers are all in the bad-guy category,” said Rothenberg. “He wants to be the guy who’s solving the problems and wants to make it clear who’s causing the problems.”
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