It’s ridiculous that the President of the United States has to intervene directly with something like the AIG executive bonuses, but if he doesn’t do it, who will…?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090316/ap_on_go_pr_wh/aig_outrage
D.F. Rogers has one of his typically funny comments — “If Obama went to Harvard Business School, instead of Harvard Law School, he’d understand why these bonuses are perfectly legitimate.”
Wall Street, the big bankers, and the rest of them, still just don’t get it. There may be plenty of free beer, fellas, but you can’t drink any more. The party’s over. You have to sober up and face reality.
Enough with the BS excuses that, “Hey, as a percentage it’s not that much money.” Obama is right to say, “This isn’t just a matter of dollars and cents. It’s about our fundamental values.”
I’ll be posting some video from the “Burn Notice” episode-of-interest. Have a technical thingy I need to do first.
I think Dodd, Geithner, and Bernanke should have their heads examined — after they all quit. I have zero tolerance for what’s going on with the AIG bonus situation. Everything must be totally above-board and beyond reproach!
Geez, the dud Dodd should resign or be taken out and drawn and quartered. He is an idiot! His half-assed explanation doesn’t help matters either. Paul probably just fell off his chair reading my opinion of a Dem. like this but it’s unbelievable that anyone could be that stupid and unethical in this matter like Dodd was. Paul, On Demand showed “Sins of Omission” as the Feb. 26 Burn Notice episode, but it ended with a guy being wheeled out in a wheelchair by Michael. Which episode were you and your wife and daughter extras in? On Demand has 4 episodes available and I may watch them all since I liked the one I saw.
The damn son of a bitch…
Dodd admits inserting loophole in stimulus for bonuses
What possible excuse can Dodd offer, other than he’s in the pocket of AIG? Who else does he owe? Dodd should resign immediately.
Paul,
What amazes me is how politicians sell out for such relatively paltry sums, like 100 grand and less. They shouldn’t be so willing to promise too much for that amount of money. Of course, lots more money than that has disappeared — in cash with no accounting — in Iraq in an attempt to control the outcome of the political system there.
I really don’t see how a direct line can be drawn back to Carter for what’s going on today with mortgage backed securities. That’s just Newt Gingrich, who is completely discredited in my mind, spouting off. There are plenty of articles available that provide detailed explanations about where the blame, misplaced or not, goes for the mortgage crisis. There is nothing cyclical about what’s happened, unless one considers greed and a lack of regulatory enforcement to be cyclical.
Barney Frank is somebody who makes some good points in his arguments, but the more I hear him over time, the more I realize he just sort of thrashes around intellectually and doesn’t really keep himself on course with a single line of reasoning. It’s one thing to be reasonable and flexible, it’s another to seem to be on track with something when in fact you’re blowing around in the wind, like Barney Frank.
Oy Vey! A better job could’ve been done by the Big Three-Moe, Larry and Curly!
Doug,
Here’s an update on Chris (the boob) Dodd:
Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday night floated the idea of taxing American International Group (AIG: 0.93, 0.1499, 19.22%) bonus recipients so the government could recoup some or all of the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit. Within hours, the idea spread to both houses of Congress, with lawmakers proposing an AIG bonus tax.
The move represents somewhat of an about-face for the Senator.
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” — which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
The amendment made it into the final version of the bill, and is law.
Separately, Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.
Dodd’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Doug,
It was on Bama’s “watch” that this latest 30 billion was given to AIG. Everything can not be blamed on Bush anymore. Chris Dodd was responsible for “overseeing” Countrywide Mortgage…(nice job Chris!) …oh that’s right…you were in their pocket with sweetheart deals on your own mortgage. He’s an unethical crook. GM will continue to bailed out as political payback from Obama and Emanuel (the left’s version of Carl Rove) Bush IS responsible for some really big, stupid things (an unwinnable war against crazy muslim extremists who will only stop terrorizing the world when the last one is dead…not a pretty thought!) but the financial mess (the housing meltdown) is directly linked to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and most of the blame goes to Barney Frank (three weeks ago he was the subject of a mainstream media puff-piece on 60 Minutes and he was called “The smartest man in congress.” OMG…if that’s true, we’re all screwed. He should be charged with a crime or at least be labelled as incompetent. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was his responsibilty to oversee. And this boob has the nerve to criticize private industry for being asleep at the wheel? All losers. (both parties) If Obama really believed that this spending would end this recession (it won’t…these things are historically cyclical) then why doesn’t he spend 200 trillion? Then we’d ALL be rich, right?
Paul,
Guess what? I agree with you, although I don’t know enough about Dodd to know how good/bad he is. For some reason he never seems to stick in my mind. Barney Frank I’m somewhat bothered by, not because he’s gay, but because he allowed himself to be the victim of a gay hustler, and because he was so totally clueless when interviewed by Stephen Colbert.
And I don’t lay the blame for Detroit’s problems completely on the unions. They’re certainly part of what went wrong, but for a long time the profits were plentiful, and the executives were getting everything they wanted, so why shouldn’t the guys working the assembly lines? I think the reason the Big Three failed is they made lousy cars for too long compared to the Japanese models.
Also, Obama is stuck dealing with a Bush mess, and I admit that so far nothing he’s done seems to be working. But Obama is now in his “no more Mr. Nice Guy” mode, so I’m hoping he puts a real scare in the guys who think they can beg for help and still take their usual cut. If he doesn’t do that, then I’ll be very disappointed.
I believe that you have overlooked the fact that our government is so stupid that they loaned the money to AIG without even investigating the situation. These bonuses and payments were contractually agreed to, long before AIG was bailed out. The true “crime” here is that our government, both the Bush administration and the Obama administration, didn’t do their homework before giving this loser company MY money. There is no such thing as “too big to fail.” These banks, insurance giants, newspapers, and most off all, the union controlled institutions (car manufacturers especially), should go out of business if they can not run profitably. The idea that our government (run by morons like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd) are deciding which businesses shouldn’t be allowed to fail is crazy!