Ask Chris Dodd who put that langauge in there about the bonus money not being able to be touched as long as it is handed out before a specific date, he put it in, then ask who was the Chris Dodds biggest campaign contribitor for his failed Presidents campaign. First person to answer that, goes to the front of class.
Seems Washington people just take care of business as usual, and we get the shaft.
tomh
Dear All,
Anyone remember the movie scene in “Doc Hollywood” where Woody Harrelson was planning to start an insurance company? (Flood? Earthquake?)
His scheme was to take the money 'til a disaster hit, then declare bankruptcy.
The initial bailout under Bush was poorly written, giving the treasury sec. total control and no strings attached to the money for the recipients.
We essentially told them “business as usual”, which included giving bonuses per the contracts with their employees.
I am convinced these “bonuses tirades” are just diversions or smokescreens for some other shenanigans in D.C.
The pols screaming the loudest probably have something to hide,
or are trying to blame someone else for the unintended consequences of their poorly written law.
165 million = one tenth of one percent of the monies given to AIG = small change.
C’mon, guys, what about the other 99.9 percent?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely:
Watch congress “legally” stomp those bonus recipients into the ground tax-wise in an attempt to cover their (congress’s) mistakes. Shame, shame, shame.
Sincerely,
Joe Satnik
Edit: grammar
This is about “contract law” , the foundation for all business in the USA. If the gov’mint can void these contracts, what faith will anyone have in any contractual obligation? These politicians are living in glass houses and should know better than to throw stones. They may believe themselves to be above the laws they pass.
Welcome, taxpayers, to the Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage – where D.C.'s histrionic enablers of taxpayer-funded corporate bailouts compete for Best Performance of Hypocritical Indignation.
And don’t talk to me about all the politicians stampeding to tax AIG’s bonuses. Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, the corporate crony who is the largest recipient of AIG donations, is now leading the charge to tax the retention payments in order to recoup the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit. But Dodd, it turns out, was for protecting AIG’s bonuses before he was against them. Dodd successfully inserted a teeny-tiny amendment that provided for an “‘exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,’ which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax.” Pay no attention to what his left hand was doing. Dodd’s right fist is pounding mightily, mightily for the sake of the taxpayers.
Spare me President Obama’s finger wag. He’s “outraged”? Two weeks ago, Team Obama forked over another $30 billion for the basket-case company after it reported $61.7 billion in fourth-quarter losses. That’s on top of the first $85 billion round and the second $38 billion round under Bush – both of which Obama supported. (Obama, by the way, collected more than $101,000 in AIG campaign contributions.) Don’t talk to me about how the Obama administration opposes rewarding failure.
If Washington’s newfound opponents of rewarding failure want to do taxpayers a favor, how about giving back their automatic pay raises? How about returning all their AIG donations? How about taking back all the bailout money to all the failed enterprises, from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to AIG, the automakers and the big banks? Barry? Harry? Nancy? John? Chris? Bueller? Bueller?
Exit stage left. The curtain falls.
When companies are in bankruptcy, contracts are voided ALL THE TIME. Unions ave been asked to “give back” repeatedly. I can’t see why this is any different.
tom huisenga said:
Ask Chris Dodd who put that langauge in there about the bonus money not being able to be touched as long as it is handed out before a specific date, he put it in, then ask who was the Chris Dodds biggest campaign contribitor for his failed Presidents campaign. First person to answer that, goes to the front of class.Seems Washington people just take care of business as usual, and we get the shaft.
tomh
It’s not Dodd:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/17/treasury-attempts-to-blame-dodd-for-aig-bonuses/
and here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/index.html
I’ve got no feeling or or against Dood. The villains in this piece, it seems to me, are Geithner and Summers
A summary of the last week’s happenings: Get a $300,000,000,000 gift from the pols who are assisting the Wall Street geniuses in robbing the treasury. Pass around $175,000,000 in bonus money to employees who should be actually be under investigation (if not indictment) for the crime of insurance fraud. Now our “representatives” are going to make the payers and / or payees pay tax on the $175 million. What a deal that is.
As an aside, I would like to know why the criminals weren’t going to pay tax on their ill-gotten gains in the first place. Oh, I forgot, only the little people pay taxes. Our chief tax evader, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has probably exempted proceeds from criminal enterprises from the tax system.
AIG Criminal Enterprise Chief Executive Edward Liddy who claims he is working for only $1.00 / year must be one of the happiest criminals on the face of the planet.
I love Obama’s hand wringing performance where he worried about the criminal acts (my term) of the AIG executives and employees. Too bad he couldn’t have been bothered to pick up the phone and have the FBI go pick a few of these guys up. I would guess many of the 400+ retention bonus recipients have now fled to countries where there is no extradition treaty. Some retention plan. Too bad Obama doesn’t believe in a detention plan for them.
Happy RRing,
Jerry
President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses. He and the rest of the political class thus neatly deflected attention from the larger outrage, which is the five-month Beltway cover-up over who benefited most from the AIG bailout.
mike omalley said:Then they should go bankrupt and not receive benefits from their payoffs to this administration .
When companies are in bankruptcy, contracts are voided ALL THE TIME. Unions ave been asked to "give back" repeatedly. I can't see why this is any different.
Mike, I agree to a point, Dodd is the one in charge of the Banking committe though, the million dollar question is did he read the fine print? I agree though Gietner knew about this, he has no clue like the other people.
tomh
Ken Brunt said:
President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses. He and the rest of the political class thus neatly deflected attention from the larger outrage, which is the five-month Beltway cover-up over who benefited most from the AIG bailout.
David Hill said:David:
Then they should go bankrupt and not receive benefits from their payoffs to this administration.
Perhaps you have forgotten, but our immediate past president started the current round of federally funded bailouts of companies that were and are insolvent and / or technically bankrupt. On September 18, 2008, President George Bush announced the ‘takeover’ of AIG, but it was really a purchase of AIG for $85,000,000,000 ($85 billion), representing the largest and so far most successful attack on capitalism in my 67 year lifetime. To refresh your memory, I suggest you carefully read this article from the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html
Using our tax dollars to take over a failed privately held insurance company has to be one of the stupidest, or perhaps the most brilliant, moves in the history of the United States, and our Republican President was the person in charge. As a life-long fiscal conservative and staunch capitalist, I believe former President Bush, his cabinet members and advisors committed the greatest robbery of the U.S. Treasury in history. We can’t even image the money those so called “leaders” have received, and the very long-term damage done to the U.S. capitalist system as a result of President Bush’s decision.
I am certainly not a fan of President Obama (No, I didn’t vote for either McCain nor Obama), and virtually all of my “okay, lets see what he does” patience is used up on his administration’s continued support of the status quo. In my opinion, “this administration” simply seems to be continuing the previous administration’s robbery of the U.S. Treasury and the attendant destruction of the capitalistic system. To be certain, our Senate and Congress are complicit in the theft, but to put those thefts solely on “this administration” is disingenuous at best.
Happy RRing,
Jerry
Jerry Bowers said:
In my opinion, "this administration" simply seems to be continuing the previous administration's robbery of the U.S. Treasury and the attendant destruction of the capitalistic system. To be certain, our Senate and Congress are complicit in the theft, but to put those thefts solely on "this administration" is disingenuous at best.Happy RRing,
Jerry
Jerry Bowers said:David Hill said:David:
Then they should go bankrupt and not receive benefits from their payoffs to this administration.Perhaps you have forgotten, but our immediate past president started the current round of federally funded bailouts of companies that were and are insolvent and / or technically bankrupt. On September 18, 2008, President George Bush announced the ‘takeover’ of AIG, but it was really a purchase of AIG for $85,000,000,000 ($85 billion), representing the largest and so far most successful attack on capitalism in my 67 year lifetime. To refresh your memory, I suggest you carefully read this article from the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html
Using our tax dollars to take over a failed privately held insurance company has to be one of the stupidest, or perhaps the most brilliant, moves in the history of the United States, and our Republican President was the person in charge. As a life-long fiscal conservative and staunch capitalist, I believe former President Bush, his cabinet members and advisors committed the greatest robbery of the U.S. Treasury in history. We can’t even image the money those so called “leaders” have received, and the very long-term damage done to the U.S. capitalist system as a result of President Bush’s decision.
I am certainly not a fan of President Obama (No, I didn’t vote for either McCain nor Obama), and virtually all of my “okay, lets see what he does” patience is used up on his administration’s continued support of the status quo. In my opinion, “this administration” simply seems to be continuing the previous administration’s robbery of the U.S. Treasury and the attendant destruction of the capitalistic system. To be certain, our Senate and Congress are complicit in the theft, but to put those thefts solely on “this administration” is disingenuous at best.
Happy RRing,
Jerry
There has been so many bailouts, talks of bailouts and backing off of bailout by Congress since last summer, I have a hard time remembering or understanding the time line of who did what when. I do know that most of this has happened since the 2006 election. I do know that OBAMA has been in favor of all of it and has tried to support all of it with his teleprompter, when it told him to. I think “W” did a good job of protecting us from foreign aggression, but failed on the domestic side. I don’t think OBAMA and his cronies with their education and business experience have a clue of the real World and we are now quickly becoming a failed social experiment.
The American public is starting to “discover” who this guy really is. His poll numbers are dropping like a rock. I’ll agree the mess we are in today was started decades ago, but the attributes of a real leader (with some real world experience) would not be to simply throw money at the problem. Sort of like the throwing Jell-o at the wall to see how much sticks.
David Hill said:
The American public is starting to “discover” who this guy really is. His poll numbers are dropping like a rock.
From Gallup:
You wish it was. Maybe it will. Don’t ever stop hoping for failure! Obama stepped into a mess that other people made. But he’s the prez, the buck stops with him now. In my opinion, he erred when he made Geithner and Summers his chief economic actors. Both are too much committed to the banking industry and they mistake the fiscal health of their peers for the nation’s fiscal health. They have the problem that most people have–they think their particular community is the whole world. If everyone around you hates Obama, you think the whole world hates Obama. If everyone around you hates Bush, you think the whole world hates Bush. If everyone you know is in, say, the aerospace industry, or the education biz, you tend to think those industries are the center of the universe. Gethner and Summer and Bernacke are all products of the same banking industry, which is dominated by six big firms. All their friends are bankers; they hang out with bankers, and so the bonuses, which look like a complete outrage to the rest of us–because they ARE a complete outrage–seems like business as usual, to them. In my opinion, Obama has badly mishandled this, but I was critical of his economic policy advisors way back in December, for exactly this reason. I said this 100 times in the forums–Obama is no radical, he’s no socialist. He’s entirely committed to the continuation of banking as it was, which is why he went with Geithner and Summers. It’s a mistake–the system was broken. I suspect the only option we have–the thing they are going to end up doing–is temporarily nationalizing AIG and other large banks–taking control, selling off lots of assets for the best price, and then re-selling the banks to private individuals. Who gets screwed in that? Those who invested in the banks. A lot of big powerful people. Lots of rich Republicans, lots of rich Democrats. It’s going to be a long, painful slog getting to the point of nationalizing the banks, and ther ewill be howls and protests and demagoguing on both sides. I don’t see another alternative
Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating – which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve – is just six, his lowest rating to date.
[Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth] M.E. Cohen
Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690358175013837.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Keep hope alive!
I am hoping for change.
