Brian Deese, the Dismantler of GM

Hmm..

Brian Deese, the Dismantler of GM
source

"The New York Times introduces 31-year-old Brian Deese, a near graduate of Yale Law School, as President Obama’s pick to re-shape General Motors—and American capitalism along the way. As a special assistant to the president for economic policy, he was pretty much the only full-time member of the Presidential Task Force on Automobiles from November 4 through mid-February. He comes to the job with no automotive experience, or business experience, or much experience at all, if you put his resume up against the insanely vast and critical task before him. Making him perfect for the job. Maybe a real outsider is just what the General needs. Deese seems to have earned the president’s ear with competence. By all reports, he sees the challenges of GM’s tumble holistically, in terms of the effect on the economy in general, Medicaid and unemployment insurances in the specific, and understands the political ramifications of every thing he eats, reads or wears from here on out. No one older than 31 would want this job. And you’d be hard pressed to find anyone younger. So he’s perfect."

Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

The dismantler Brian Deese had never given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Brian Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s dismantling maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”

But now, according to those who joined Brian Deese in the middle of his crash course about the automakers’ downward spiral, he has emerged as one of the most influential voices in what may become President Obama’s biggest experiment yet in federal economic intervention.

Brian Deese, the Dismantler of GM