Not aware…not aware…not aware.

If you say it 3 times, it comes true.

um…aig is just the clearing house that distributes the scam. How else can you look at this because these are not stupid people, just very crooked and greedy.

That looked painful. Through The Looking Glass:

Gibbs: …should be done going backwards. …taking the steps today to go back and see …exhaust all legal remedies in looking backwards …based on some limitations that we have in looking backwards.

digg is open.

Thanks Jane.

Geithner
MUST
Go

Best case scenario here, Gibbs is asking us to believe that Geithner was not aware of the law that the President signed on February 17 limiting executive compensation for TARP recipients that could have restricted the AIG bonuses but didn’t

The President signed a law Geithner not being aware of the law is no excuse the deal Geithner made is null and void.

Force them to make new contracts like they did to the poor working stiffs in the auto industry. We need to dump every last one of these fucks. Looks like Obama is talking out his ass already.

You should probably recommend a brook no bullshit line producer to the Obama team to handle the negotiations with AIG… I think Obama and his Whiz Kids from Harvard dont quite carry the cojones needed for the Wall Street Sharks… Obama still thinks he can reason and negotiate with these thugs in silk suits…

Of what use are these “best and brightest” — whose retention bonuses are so important — to us, the American taxpayers, who own their employer?

*************

You know, God said he would not interdict a certain city if there were one good person living there. Unlike the Cheney/Bush administration who lied to make “logical” an invasion into Iraq, based on fricking exiles.

I have yet to meet one person who one might consider “Christian” at AIG. Let the bombs fall. Kill the entire company.

Mod note: ***** Suggestions of violence will be removed from the conversation.

The best that company had bankrupted it and then some. If the government owns 80% of AIG why are we listening to those who drove it into the ditch?

that could have restricted the AIG bonuses but didn’t, was not aware of what AIG intended to use the March 1 $30 billion for, and was not aware that $1.2 billion in 2009 executive bonus commitments even existed before this week.

Geithner is aware of the law now and so is AIG they must comply. If I get pulled over for speeding and the cop gives me a break because I didn’t know the speed limit I do not then pull out and break the speed limit.
Obama is the cop he must stop the deal or he loses his authority and everyone will mess with him.

Jane, you did a great job on the tube. I was referring to the dialogue between Tapper and Gibbs as painful.

I just can’t believe how effing clueless, the WH appears to be about the optics. What’s left of the GOP is going to drown every Democratic, liberal/progressive candidate in 2008 with ads about AIG, Wall Street, and every penny in TARP.

Great job Jane!!!!

MR. GIBBS: Well, again, Jake, we’ve got existing relationships, contracts, as I just mentioned, that were negotiated a year ago, assistance that was granted outside of the legal authority prior to the creation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The President has asked the administration to go back and look at what remedies are possible to block those bonuses.

This argument will not fly with Union Auto workers are you trying to lose Michigan?
Contracts are only respected if you are rich, bankers are more equal than Union Autoworkers?

Of what use are these “best and brightest”

Yes.

Please by all means, leave AIG, go to work for someone else, preferably someone in China.

It must be legal: give them each a million shares of AIG stock.

Make sure to collect withholding taxes first.

(Btw, Rachel was brilliant tonight with Lt. Col. Nagl.)

Ten kinds of smoke are getting blown here. AIG mgmt obviously wants to pay the bonuses. The employees seem to want to receive the bonuses. Neither AIG mgmt nor Geithner nor Gibbs is being upfront about why the payments are being made and why all the many superior reasons for not making the payments are being ignored in favor the few and unconvincing reasons on the other side. Several someones are hiding one or more somethings.

So.

Why? Who benefits? And might the whole AIG bonuses thing be just a distraction while something else more significant goes down, like the Public-Private Partnership abomination that got announced today?

For sure. The GOP set the whole thing up. The Dems walk in to save the day and get mud all over their faces feeding more billions (much more directly!) to the Goldman GOP donors the GOP gave licenses to steal in the first place.

Dugg.

enough highway robbery. Obama should do whatever it takes to gain effective control of these entities we taxpayers are buying/have bought, and put an end to their self-serving actions.

I bet FDR and his people could have written a law that would enable them to deal with this situation…

Geithner China wants to get paid for their private investments in America like Freddie and Fannie.
Your Bank Bailout is financed by China, so is the Stimulus, so is the 2 wars we are fighting.
China wants us to have a bigger Stimulus plan. Skimming off the top of the cash they loaned us is not making you any Chinese friends.
China is worried about our economy so they want us to have a bigger, more jobs stimulus plan and they are worried about the Dollar, and their investments valued in dollars losing value.
At somepoint even China will say that you are wasting money Geithner that you have no plan to ever get the tax payers, let alone China’s money back.
China unlike us can stop paying. Sure they would lose money but every real investor learns that you have to stop pouring money after losers sometime.

you were excellent on tv, jane. very measured, very clear and saying exactly what needed to be said. thanks.

Gibbs is beginning to sound too much like Scottie McClellan (the old Scottie McClellan) for my liking.

Seconded pay them in AIG stock pay all of top managements entire salary in AIG stock. Give them AIG stock to pay for their healthcare, retirement etc.

AIG finally ‘fessed up as to where the $150+ billion of bailout money went. Foreign and domestic banks got huge shots in the arm with this and TARP, TALF, etc., and where do we stand now? The system is more gridlocked, more precarious and more leveraged (due to additional derivatives and sovereign borrowings) than we were last fall. The banking and financial system as we knew it, is now broke and on life support. This includes governments and thus their currencies.

If you knew for a fact that tomorrow morning the global banking system would not open, what would you do? If you knew that government responses would be to go to market and borrow more, then print to infinity, what would you do? All roads lead to Gold because it is the only “money” that has not and cannot be infected by a credit crunch, sovereign bankruptcy, financial panic, or mass monetization.

Tomorrow morning will be here one of these days soon. The market place and human psychology will do Mother Nature’s bidding for her. We are in the “fantasy” stage where all sorts of “innovative ideas” are being thrown around to instill confidence and turn the clock back to the good ole days. None of this can work because it is all slight of hand and “unsound” business practice. It is simply BAD MATH!

Everything has become unsound, the banks and financial sector, industrial sector, pension plans, governments and their currencies, etc.. Imagine your thought process after a string of banks and financials actually fail, and the Treasury wants to borrow more “money” than is available or offered. Imagine the Fed printing $1 trillion, or even 10, to buy Treasury bonds to keep the government running. Imagine not having access to your liquid funds, or being overseas and hearing “we don’t accept Dollars”. Then, after a couple weeks, you hear the same thing in the States. In my opinion this is where we are heading one morning in the near future.

We are being told that the banks have been profitable for the last 2 months, GM doesn’t need the $2 billion this month, interesting. The stock market is now getting its long awaited bounce. Now we watch for the flame out, once this rally fails, I believe the big bust or TOMORROW MORNING will arrive. Confidence has been shattered and “hope” (the refuge of fools) is that the bottom is in and the worst is over. In this next phase, the only thing that will “be over” is the fiat monetary system. The Swiss fired the “Ft. Sumter” shot of devaluation last week, the race to the bottom is now on. When the stock market starts to flame out and begins to roll over, I believe information and events will go into hyperdrive. They cannot stretch the system nor the truth any further. It is time to “pay the piper”, if I were him I would only accept hard currency.

I thought it very odd that the FED actually bailed out AIG. They took an 80% stake in AIG. I don’t think this is allowed under the Federal Reserve Act but no one seems to care. The press keeps wrongly claiming that AIG was rescued by the Government…not so, it was the FED. I found this move by the FED HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS. I considered this was done to channel unreported money into the banks. The FED doesn’t make an annual report and I am guessing the FED will soon own 100% of AIG and AIG will not file one either. This means that the big banks will suddenly have derivative contracts that miraculously “come into the money” and they will have extraordinary one time gains. Just like winning the lottery! The FED will probably make AIG produce some bogus back-dated derivative contracts just for the record but it will be a way in which the banks will get cashed up without it looking like it is a bail-out.

No one will be able to say for sure because the derivatives markets will be so opaque. Of course the FED will have to keep quiet that they are creating money to pass to AIG but once they are 100% owned I am sure that won’t be a problem. How will they become 100% owned? The big outrage over bonuses is just separating black pepper from gnat poop. It is a trivial issue but a very emotional one for the public. The bailouts are currently up to almost 10 T$…1.2 B$ in bonuses is peanuts…Don’t get me wrong I totally agree they should not be paid any bonuses but the outrage should be against the 10T$ and the refusal by the Federal reserve to say who got what and how are they using it. The bonus issue is a diversion of public attention. Wait for the “solution” to stopping the bonuses; it will be for the FED to have 100% control of AIG. The public will then welcome the full takeover of AIG because it stops the outrageous bonuses being paid!

This will be a mechanism for back door bailouts of the banks where they will make some unimaginable gains on derivatives and then they will pay back the TARP money. The recovery of the banks will seem surreal. Citigroup has already claimed they are making money again! Huh? This will be clandestine hyperinflation but it might work for a while until everyone figures out what is going on. Just look at the names of those banks that have received money through A.I.G,’s back door already.

Rachel said the stock rose 60 percent today! Now 80 some odd cents.

This is getting to be unbelievable. I knew that Obama would cater to the rich and well connected, but I didn’t realize that he would be so closely following w in so many ways. If he keeps going in this way, I will stop capitalizing his name as I have done for w, pelosi, reid, emanuel, etc. I can’t really do anything else to shout to the world that I do not respect them.

Jane: I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to hear you speaking clearly and plainly in a MSM context. And although it’s obvious that TV MSM types are (more or less) used to decibel-hell gibberish, I’m hoping that your calm and rational approach to discourse gradually persuades them to change their formats. We need good information right now, not circus acts. Please keep doing what you’re doing. Slow and steady wins the race.

And hey Timmie G? Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out…

Two bucks and they can keep the change. There’s your Big Money, right there…

“Since this deal went through because Timothy Geithner negotiated it, did Obama know about it and would he have stopped it before hand? Somebody needs to ask him, ‘was this deal OK with you or did Geithner do it without telling you, and was this something that you’re unhappy with?’

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theno…..es-ja.html

Yes Are you ok with this deal Mr President or is Geithner like Rahm playing games behind your back?
You must fire both of them to regain your authority, and our trust.

She was pretty damn funny when she held up two $1 bills and said, “I’ll take two [shares].” And the change [$.32] — that’s your “bonus.”

“You must fire both of them to regain your authority, and our trust.”

Motion seconded.

Great GREAT post and good work from Mz. Hamsher on TV, and in here.

It all looks like the econ collapse in general is legalized theft of taxpayer money going on for decades, if not longer.

For Details One Can Start With The Deep Capture Blog And Story.

Then I Suggest A Little Light Francine McKenna.

Some More Francine, About Big 4 Liability Caps.

Francine’s Blog

Given the above, the full enormity of how it’s all tied together from investor firm, to brokerages/traders, across all sectors of business (housing to banking), to Wall Street, The MSM, elected officials and our government . . . it’s mind phreaking boggling, it’s Big Brother as I never QUITE envisioned him, but it’s him, for sure.

I’ve NEVER in my life seen such a depth, breadth and detailed amount of information linking corruption, greed, power, control and government as is coming forth in the past month or so . . . we had the Milken’s, the Enron’s, WorldComs, CountryWide, Lehman’s . . . there were there to see . . . but never have I seen such breadth and depth of detail tying it all together so that even a com studies guy like me could see how it’s been done.

Reminds me of when I saw ‘Serpico’ for the first time. I mean, I KNEW the world was crooked, my family had been caught up in some political intrigue when we were living in SE Asia in the 50’s/60’s, I knew about McCarthy when I was young, then Nixon. Then Reagan in CA, then Reagan Nationally.

But ‘Serpico’ shocked me, hard. Even the good guys were crooked. Filthy dirty. Brutal.

And now, 46 years after Al Pacino’s breakout role, the proof of Big Brother and how he works is public info.

What now?

Change? Reforms? Or suppression, crackdowns and Big Brother’s Stick? Cuz it’s out, the info is out. You can’t cover this stuff up anymore . . . the masses know.

What now?

We are living in INCREDIBLY shape changing times, be they for good or worse for our species.

We boomers can say, we saw it all, from McCarthy to Big Brother . . . whew.

Jane, just watched the video. Per others, you were pitch perfect.

Cha! stocks under a dollar move up and down if somebody sneezes. But why would AIG rise when we are calling for the bonuses to be cut?
Does the market think we will lose or win?
Or are we missing something maybe bonuses are not the right question.
Should AIG get any cash?

Geithner needs to show us just how do we the Taxpayers get paid back by AIG. I do not see how that is possible at all. Does anyone right or left think its possible and can explain how?

Tom Tomorrow is in:

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/03/17/tomo/

The WH is NOT clueless.

Look at the people and the positions they hold.

Then look at them and their history’s, who they worked for, what business/military sectors they came from.

One and all are folks who helped PUT us all into this shitmire.

And we expect them to get us OUT of it? Without SEVERE pressure from the masses?

They are the foxes, they run the henhouse, and they have JUST enough sense not to eat all the hen’s and leave at least ONE rooster.

The ONLY thing I see that’s different from history, is that there’s SO much info out now about the royal scams, WHILE it’s happening, it’s unprecedented in history, and in our lives.

So, MORE people than ever in the history of the planet are hep to the fact there IS a Royal Scam, more people than ever before in the history of the planet are hep to WHO the Royal Scammers are.

All as The Royal Scam continues to play in front of us.

This is history. This is the time/space continuum fulcrum joked about from Star Trek.

Never, have SO many, had SO much info at hand DURING the Scam.

And now, to where will it go . . . *G*

how about this?
let’s try NEW MONEY?>
since Geithner is to attached to the old money,
let’s try some NEW?
MAYBE then we can ditch this asshole from hell poster child for all things “Escher”!

AIG must have different lawyers than AT&T.
Because today with my cell phone bill there was an insert

NOTICE OF REVISED ARBITRATION CLAUSE IN CONTRACT

which unilaterally throws any unresolved complaints against Ma Bell (hard to imagine, I know)
into binding arbitration. No class action lawsuits for you, buster.

So, the sanctity of contracts in Larry Summers’ “country of law” is about
as sacred as Dave Vitter’s marriage vows.

Send it back with a note: “Arbitrate this, MF!”

Bring this up again or do a diary every voter can relate to cell phones and their changes in contract. We need to try to reach the voters through their personal experiences to get them to understand whats going on.

Gretchen Morgenson about AIG on Fresh Air today:

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..=101936770

Obama doesn’t know much about business. He took some bad advice hiring Geithner. Geithner is all about the “Lords Of The Universe” crowd. They’re in a bubble.

They believe that their business is the business of America. It’s an ideology. And it’s an ideology that has functioned in the dark, tacitly, for many years. It’s also not dissimilar to a MAFIA…. remember how folks have referred to the GWB Gang as mafiosos? It wasn’t a metaphor.

So Obama’s feeling the heat. Good. Remember, he’s a politician. If he hears a parade, he’ll run to the head of it, even if it means throwing Geithner under the bus (which he should, best possible move) And this is one feakin parade.

But on the whole of it, whether or not those dicks get their cash or not, this whole bailing out of the “too big to fail” mafias is Obama’s first Big Moment.

Jane Hamsher you have th8s discussion on MSM ABC. Wonderful work.

With 400 offshore companies that can be offshore tax shelters to avoid paying tax, why should they get any tax dollars?

watertiger is upstairs!
Mr. Steele, Is Our Republican Leaders Learning?

The new plan to sell debt by offerring the private sector low interest loans and gaurantee profits or we take the losses is far more egregious and costly tham the bonuses…trillions out of our treasury. A massive heist…bigger than the TARP.
The rest of the world is not bailing out these multi national giants.

Geithner and Summers clearly aren’t up to the jobs they’ve been given. Or are too gullible for them – you’d think they’d read the fine print on those agreements, and be aware that people can be fired for cause. Without their oversized bonuses, too – assuming those really are bonuses. (Something for the IRS to look into: have they been paying the correct taxes, given that those big checks might be wages, rather than bonuses?)

Both Obama and congress keep talking about ‘new regulations’; well….where in Hell are they? The new Glass-Steagall law should have been written BEFORE that cussed first TARP legislation was approved.

If the government owns 80% of AIG why are we listening to those who drove it into the ditch?

Because the goal is to shore up companies of systemic importance, not to run them.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Strange. I always thought fast and steady wins.

Now, I don’t want to pay these guys a red cent – okay maybe 6¢ an hour or whatever the rate for working in the prison laundry is these days. But I think we have to be careful not to hurt ourselves in the process of exacting just vengeance.

First, one wonders if these numbskulls are needed to help unravel the mess they made. That is, keeping them on at AIG may be the only way to maintain the financial system. Second, there is the matter of not paying the bonuses potentially be treated as a sizable enough default to trigger all kinds of payouts for AIG and on AIG by others (in the tens to 100s of billions) because of the credit default swap issue, some of which these criminals may have written. That is, failing to pay 100 million could cost the financial system 100s of billions of dollars in losses, which could trigger further defaults, etc, causing a cascading failure. As 80% owners of AIG, the taxpayers might be on the hook for some of the AIG losses potentially and certainly the massive collapse of these instruments would be felt by everyone. $100 million in bonuses looks cheap compared to the these consequences of not paying it, if that’s a possibility.

Now, moving forward, if we were to say pay the bonuses and then create a special tax rate for bonuses paid on such and such or levy massive fines on quickly defined ill-gotten gains (a la the recovery and confiscation laws for drug-related offenses) etc. to recover those bonuses, I think we might see a little bipartisan support for that in Congress. But I think it’s fair to say that we might want to carefully consider paying the bonuses if the alternative is blowing what little is left of our financial system (including a lot of private and public pension funds btw) to smithereens.

how do we the Taxpayers get paid back by AIG. I do not see how that is possible at all. Does anyone right or left think its possible and can explain how?

Isn’t our ‘investment’ in stock or warrants? I’d think we could just sell ‘em once the economy gets going.

Hellloo… is anyone out there? About these bonuses – what is written in these employee bonus contracts that is so unimpeachable? What did the recipients have to do to qualify? Surely it is not “I exist therefore I get a bonus”! All employee contracts should have measurable standards against which to assess accomplishments. So what is written that allows these super-achievers to lose $60+ billion in a quarter and manage to be rewarded?

If you watch the daily briefings with Gibbs, you know what a painful process that can be. He’s hamstrung by the limits set for him by others and he rather faithfully adheres to them without a mutter of complaint. He’s your garden-variety flak-catcher, iow. He’s like the vice president of the Fed who spoke before the Senate Banking Committee recently, totally in ignorance of what’s going on and merely repeating what he was advised to say to the committee. These are not the people we want to hear from. We want to here directly from the participants, including all the AIG personnel of direct interest to us as well as all the people on the government side representing those being forced to bankroll the banksters, viz., us.

Basically they are full of shit. Also, note that larry summers and geithner were hectoring Dodd to pull back on his executive compensation restrictions that he wrote into the bailout bill. On 2-14-09 when this was first announced the restrictions were supposed to be retroactive according to the wsj (google bankers face strict new pay cap. Later, they mysteriously changed to not being retroactive in articles the very next day – http://news.aol.com/article/co…..aol_inpage -. Whether that was due to a mistake in the first article or the result of the strenuous efforts of “public” servants geithner and geithner’s cheney, summers, I do not know. but it is obvious that obama’s wall street proxies that HE appointed such as summers and geithner and orszag as well and throw in emanuel and then also furman and then robber rubin’s son and on and on and on (you sure do want to keep those wall street contacts properly fed and that funnel lubed for your reelection campaign, don’t you obama?) did not want restrictions on these wall street guys’ pay that they’ve been rubbing elbows with for a long, long time.

so that makes larry summers’ little act yesterday on tv in which he huffed and puffed up like the toad that he is rather disingenuous. you know the one where he says that he is steaming mad at aig and can understand the rage of the public. then he goes on and says that it’s due to not enough of the types of government regulation that he labored so hard in the clinton demonstration to break down. then next up he says that there is nothing that can be done unfortunately becoz it’s in the contracts which he fought so hard to make sure stayed just the way they are. Then of course he caps off his mind-splitting hypocratic crescendo with comments that we are a nation of laws and we have to abide by the rule of laws. hahahhahah … what a theatre of the absurd with the starring role going to a corrupt wall street toad representing mr. hope/mr. retroactive immunity for the telcoms/mr. “let’s just move along and forget about past war crimes” lecturing us about the sanctity of the rule of law when it’s obvious that to the one that was a top in his class graduate of harvard law school that the rule of law is one that is only to be applied AGAINST the citizens and FOR his big campaign contributors and plutocrat pals exemplified by the dichotomy of the aig and uaw situations.

think about this: who appointed these people to his economic team that have represented wall street interests their entire life? that is the one that is ultimately responsible for this aig bonus bs and don’t let his clever oratoricals where he tries to act like HE is outraged at what THEY (aig/wall street) did fool you, becoz HE is THEY.

now the next little work around/act of deceit they will pull on us is to add the bonus money to the bill that aig will never pay back.

Z

~~~ModNote: Link fixed.~~~

The new Glass-Steagall law should have been written BEFORE that cussed first TARP legislation was approved.

Last year? When Bush would’ve vetoed anything Dems produced? Ha!
Besides, Paulson surprised Congress with just how urgent the TARP was and they had no time to produce regulations.

Boy Zeabow, I hear ya and I have to agree. What the heck are we doing with Geithner and others who represent the failures of Wall St and the financial oversight sector. Summers hems and haws and capitulates because ‘he is not a lawyer’. We need earnest people to represent the people, not fallout from the Bush mess.

Gibbs’ claim that he knows “it’s” true based on accounts in the newspapers is ludicrous. It’s like Dick Cheney saying his knowledge of extraordinary renditions, torture and domestic spying were limited to what he read in the New York Times.

If Mr. Gibbs’ knowledge were limited to that publicly available through the Trad Med, he should be fired in disgrace. His knowledge isn’t limited to that. It’s a phrase-of-art, designed for politicians who want to admit obvious facts, but base their admission only on what the public already knows. It is specifically designed to avoid admissions based on information the public does not already know, but the politician does. It’s a fig leaf, a small one at that.

The phrasing is also passive, meant to avoid casting the politician in an active role in any of the foul play he’s admitting to knowing about, “based on published reports”. Just as it’s meant to avoid his having to do anything about it.

In addition to firing most of AIG’s top management and board, I’d say Obama already needs to clean his house, or at least start a long line leading up to his woodshed.

They should get rid of those thing and have the prez do it…. for one thing, it looks like Gibbs is a freakin’ lawyer representing the guilty part. It’s a bad artifice, ditch it.

He’s the press secretary, not the treasury secretary. He’s not paid to know everything, he’s paid to talk – to the limit that the president sets. (Isn’t he better than Bush’s assorted press turkeys?)

My comment posted at the DIGG:

pup34:

In her first sentence Jane Hamsher gives the link to the video of her live appearance on ABC Politics Live.. She delivers a fine, clear, well articulated and fair presentation of the main objections to the bail-out as it has been and is being authorized and administered.

President Obama, his Treasury Secretary Gietner, all members of both houses of congress, and those bankers on Wall Street and AIG would do well to listen to Jane’s words for they speak in calm, measured tones the truth about the justified position of the thinking, reading, mature citizenry on this issue. There are many of us and our numbers are growing each day; with more job losses and homes lost and families having to go to food banks, It is reasonable to predict that we could well become the majority of America’s population.

Are you listening, President Obama?

pup34

It is good that so many people are aware of the injustice of the bonus payments. However, that issue is chump change compared to the trillions of bailout dollars some of which was approved by Congress despite overwhelming negative public reponses. The huge dollar amounts pprovided by the Fed were never approved by Congress or the taxpayers. Huh?

We need to shift our outrage to the big dollar activites. Winning the bonus battle (a dubious outome at this point) lets the looters and fraudsters continue.I recommend:
1) Fire Summers & Geithner now. Replace all former GS employees currently on the US payroll.
2) Appoint Roubini & Volcker to replace them if they are willing. If not, the country would be better off with vacant offices until competent replacements who truly support O’s vision of change can be hired.
3) Plug the leaks of our tax dollars through the Fed & call all bailout loans.
4) No more bailouts other than DIP financing for prepacked bankruptcies of the too big to fail.

I’m getting that sinking feeling that Obama is becoming ensnared and compromised in this whole AIG mess the same way that Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, and Harmon got roped into the NSA telecom scam.

Someone talk me down.

just like I thought:

“By seeking to link repayment of the bonus money to the coming $30 billion in assistance, the administration seemed to leave open the possibility that the company would effectively be repaying taxpayers with taxpayer money. A Treasury official disputed that taxpayers would be repaying themselves, but could not specify how else the company would give back the money.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03…..f=business

Z

like I had written earlier:

now the next little work around/act of deceit they will pull on us is to add the bonus money to the bill that aig will never pay back.

this is just another variation of the same trick. they get to keep the bonuses and the company will owe more money that they’ll never pay back anyway unless you care to delude yourself into believing that aig will pay back 170B fucking dollars … and counting. real clever …

Z

I wonder what santelli has to say about this or is he still too outraged about people not getting thrown out on the street to be concerned about his trading pals buying another home in the hamptons.

Z

I’m glad to see this thread still open.

I think it is important here to see that Obama’s economic team is working on two very different levels. The top level is full of glitz and shiny objects, and includes AIG and Citigroup, etc. Its what Geithner and Bernanke are focused on. This stuff is not working too well, and IMHO until they shut down the CDS shell game, throwing money at the problem won’t solve it.

The other level, however, may be more important. And that is Obama’s small business program. $15 Billion is pocket change to AIG, but the small business program may do more to put people back to work, and get the economy going again.

Bob in HI

AIG announced LAST YEAR that they were going to give out $400 million in bonuses. They ended up splitting those bonuses up with $165,000,000 given out this year. Because we gave money to AIG last year under the TARP that had no regulations of these bonuses, I don’t see how the Obama Admin can recover the money unfortunately. Also, seems to me President Obama was rightly disgusted with AIG for giving out the bonuses considering the hatred felt towards the company. AIG doesn’t care about self-regulating itself to protect the good name of the company apparently. Wells Fargo stepped up to the plate by self-regulating it’s bonuses etc., so why couldn’t AIG? This is what President Obama was expressing yesterday.

I knew about these bonuses last year because I did a post on the $400,000,000 payout. Everyone knew, but most of us were hoping that AIG wouldn’t follow through and use the money to put it back into the company. They didn’t. Assholes.

And don’t think today that the 2nd half of the money has extreme laws in place for oversight. US Congressman Mike Michaud of Maine has explained in an email that THE SENATE HAS NOT VOTED ON STRENGTHENING OVERSIGHT:

“The fact that this is allowed to happen is an outrage. But there is a difference between expressing outrage and acting to fix this problem. I appreciate President Obama’s willingness to explore ways to stop these bonuses, but it is time for Congress to step up to the plate and make sure taxpayers are not paying for executive bonuses. I’ve supported reform of how bailout funds are spent. These reforms passed the House, but the Senate has failed to act on them. I’ve also called on the House Financial Services Committee to close loopholes in the current program that allow for excessive executive compensation while companies are being subsidized by American taxpayers.”

Congress is the problem at this point.

what makes you think the wh is clueless. geithner is a wall street shill, and there hasn’t been any oversight over how the other tarp money has been spent. they’re hoping people wouldn’t catch on. notice how on sunday, they’re floating trial balloons like “the sanctity of contracts.” you don’t try to insult the american people with such shameful rationalizations if you didn’t see it coming. why even attempt that excuse if you’re really angry, as obama now purports to be.

at some point, the wh has to own this mess. they either didn’t see this coming–in a stunning display of incompetence–or this was part of the plan.

Who runs “the country”?

Asked why Mr. Obama’s language was more pointed than Mr. Summers’s comments, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in an interview: “The president and Larry aren’t identical twins.” While Mr. Summers must weigh how the AIG bonuses and their fallout could impact the economy and the markets, Mr. Axelrod said, “The president’s job is to speak for the country. The president explained himself in simple and direct sentences.”

How the AIG bonuses will be resolved “is now in the hands of the lawyers at Treasury,” Mr. Axelrod added.

http://online.wsj.com/article/…..ml?ref=fp1