Interesting finding in the new Democracy Corps polling:

[N]early three-in-ten voters (29 percent) say that the AIG story raises no doubts at all in their mind about President Obama.

The same cannot be said for Geithner, as nearly half of voters (49 percent) report that the AIG scandal raises significant doubts, including nearly a quarter (24 percent) who say it raises extreme doubts about the Treasury Secretary.

People in an earlier thread were asking for a list of the 63 Democrats who joined with the 165 Republicans to pass an amendment putting a huge loophole in Alan Grayson’s bill, which would have forced TARP recipients to stop paying “retention bonuses” as long as they were being supported by taxpayer dollars.

Melissa Bean’s amendment says that as long as banks start paying back their loan money, which they can do

Melissa Bean proved she’s a worthy successor to Ellen Tauscher as head of the Wall Street-friendly New Democrat Coalition when she led an effort to insert a huge loophole in a bill that would have forced TARP recipients to make all bonuses performance based.

Scott Polakoff has been put on leave pending investigation of his role in permitting federal savings banks to falsify their financial statements. Maybe someone should check into his role in supervising AIG.

Despite the claims of the rich, wealth does not equal morality. The American economy won’t recover until we understand that.

Fox Business News has an article describing what it got in response to a FOIA request for Treasury documents on the bailout. While most of the interesting details were redacted because of attorney-client privilege, the documents do reveal the extent to which Citi and AIG were as arrogant when Treasury was negotiating this stuff as they have been in recent weeks.

Here’s an old AIG financial planning commercial:

New AIG parody commercial:

Avarice Ignorance Greed

America just got its lunch eaten by finance. The question now is what to do as the program unfolds.

Remember when AIG told us if it didn’t pay the bonuses, and top people left Banque AIG, we might be on the hook to collateralize $234bn in credit default swaps? Guess who’s quitting on the same day whiny Jake DeSantis got published in the New York Times.

Michael Capuano (D-MA) did the best job grilling Geithner and Bernanke about Geithner’s new bailout plan today. He challenged Geither’s claim that this leverages private investment at a 6 to 1 ratio, arguing that with the FDIC funding, it’s actually 13 to 1.