Rep. Paul Kanjorski opened today’s questioning of Edward Liddy with a jaw-dropper: Kanjorski knew the bonuses were coming after numerous discussions with Liddy. He says he requested supporting documents, but, when AIG was not forthcoming, he never subpoenaed any information, nor moved to stop the bonuses going ahead.

No surprise, Kanjorski has been in the tank for bank lobbyists for decades, and voted for every piece of bank written anti-regulatory legislation that has come before him.

The hearing can be viewed on the committee stream or CSPAN3.

The witnesses are:

Panel two Mr. Edward M. Liddy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, American International Group Mr. Rodney Clark, Managing Director, Insurance Ratings, Standard & Poor’s

Six months ago, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner were prepared to let Lehman go down in an uncontrolled bankruptcy. This obviously did not turn out well. Now they think that they can never let any creditors of any bank ever lose money.

After the collapse of Lehman, the debt markets were closed to Goldman and Morgan Stanley. Their competitors like JPMorgan derive about 50% of their short-term financing from deposits and 50% from the debt markets. But Goldman and Morgan Stanley have no deposits to speak of. They would be dead in the water without access to this financing.

The end of civilization as we know it. The worst bill ever. That is how the right has characterized the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Today on GRITtv Chris Kromm, Gene Carroll and others discuss what is driving the real fear behind the right to unionize.

The first panel on AIG hearing.

I’m at the Rayburn Office Building for the House Financial Services Committee hearing on AIG. I’m delivering 20,000 signatures from readers, with their comments, calling for more transparency in the bank bailout. When we started our series of chats with experts last week, the issue of AIG bonuses hadn’t erupted, nor had it become evident much of the money that supposedly went to AIG to help encourage lending had in fact gone to foreign banks.

Over the last ten days, we’ve been asking you to help in our fight to demand a greater degree of transparency from our government when it comes to the money distributed to in an attempt to prop up a variety of troubled financial institutions.

Today, our very own Jane Hamsher delivered your letters, signatures, and comments to the House Committee on Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee hearings.

At some point, doesn’t the entire financial brouhaha and ensuing mess begin to feel like a Monopoly game gone to the crapper? A few thoughts before today’s House Financial Services committee hearing with AIG execs beginning at 10 am ET. C-Span3 will have live coverage and we will as well.

• Show us the money.
• Have fun on the Hill today, Ed.
• They need to admit they made a mistake.
• Two late-breaking AIG updates here and here.
• Playing the housing crisis for laughs.
• The wingnuts will be disappointed.
• And here I thought Texas was bad.