I Can Tell You About Steven Rattner's Tell-All

Steven Rattner, the onetime New York Times reporter, former investment banker, would-be private equity media mogul, Hillary Clinton mega-fundraiser, and Treasury secretary-in-waiting, who became the stoic-but-obviously-disappointed Obama administration almost-car Tsar, and who is now being investigated by the SEC and the New York state attorney general for a kickback scheme involving his old firm, has written a tell-all about his brief time in the Obama administration helping to rescue the American automobile industry.

It is being billed as the first Obama insider account, a record of privates chats and a participant's view of public events.

Well ... several years ago, I wrote a tell-all (or anyway, what I had to tell) about the media business, and part of what I had to tell was about Steven Rattner--who reacted like a stuck pig.

This column is not, per se, about Rattner's book, which, from the snippets in circulation, seems readable and appropriately insiderish; nor about his performance as almost-car Tsar, which, judging by the apparent rebirth of GM, seems successful; nor about his complicated (to say the least) reputation. It's about writing invasive books about powerful people.

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