04 November 2010

So I don't have to read the book

I don't plan to read Rattner's recent book on the auto industry bailout and restructuring.

I feel a bit guilty about not reading it. On the basis of its topic and the author's point of view thereof, it surely seems like the sort of thing I should read, to help preserve my own econoblogger cred.

Rattner, you'll all remember, was chosen in the opening days of the Obama administration to superintend the federal restructuring of both General Motors and Chrysler, and this book is his account of his work at that task.

Rattner also got himself into some hot water in a pay-to-play scheme involving New York State's pension funds, but I don't imagine that scandal figures prominently in the book, OVERHAUL.

Anyway, to ease the aforesaid pangs of guilt, I've read Malcolm Gladwell's detailed review of OVERHAUL in The New Yorker, as well as Felix Salmon's reply to Gladwell in Salmon's Reuters-sponsored blog.

Okay, those pangs were never very sharp....

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Knowledge is warranted belief -- it is the body of belief that we build up because, while living in this world, we've developed good reasons for believing it. What we know, then, is what works -- and it is, necessarily, what has worked for us, each of us individually, as a first approximation. For my other blog, on the struggles for control in the corporate suites, see www.proxypartisans.blogspot.com.