Posted on 03/16/2009 9:53:59 AM PDT by autumnraine
WASHINGTON — President Obama vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.
In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That would mean bankruptcy. The government seems dead-set on avoiding an AIG bankruptcy, and chose to give them billions of dollars to prevent that. That money is now accessible by all of AIG's creditors, including those contractually owed these bonuses.
Let’s take a long hard look at what welfare recipients are doing with their government checks first. A lot of that money is going to drug dealers.
pssst... it’s fascism.
gov’t control of privately owned businesses.
Socialism would be what Marxine Waters wants, government takeover and ownership of business.
Just a little pedantry on your terminology, sorry.
PLUS PUNITIVE DAMAGES!.........................
The simple truth is if the contractural bonuses aren’t paid, AIG is going to get sued. And the suits will cost AIG (and us, of course) a LOT more than just forking over the bonuses. The only winners in that scenario are the lawyers.
“as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.”
This a strange way to put it. Another, more accurate, description would be that Obama operates under populist illusions himself, and truly believes that the government knows better how to compensate people than private companies.
“They gave it the money to keep it going because AIG handles the US Congress critters’ pension plan or fund”
Correction: “They *nationalized* it to keep it going...”
The argument being made is we need to keep these people on a payroll because we need their understanding of the situation unwind our responsibilities to counter parties, if they disappear “confidence will be lost” with unpredictable results - essentially, the taxpayers and to some extent perhaps AIG’s management is being blackmailed.
However, there’s nothing that prevents management from playing hardball in return: you pack a conference room with a few dozen or so people who are receiving the really significant performance bonuses, and you lay it out for them:
“You want your bonus checks, fine, if you still want them at the at the end of this meeting ,we’ll hand them to you at the door.
But first you might want to take a close look at the other people sitting behind this table, if you decide to take the bonuses , they are the auditing team were going to be looking at every extant scrap of paper, e-mail, IM and VM message relevant to your performance during the period of evaluation justifying payment for performance.
And if they find anything - anything at all - suggesting that you achieved anything less than 100% compliance with the requirements of your employment contracts, you can rest assured that not only we will see you in court to recoup such payments, but the result of out investigation will be made available to any interested outside party.
Anyway,, that’s it, and those of you who want your checks, exit via the right-hand door...”
“Just a little pedantry on your terminology, sorry.”
The line between fascism and socialism is so fine. Both attempt to plan the economy from a central authority. Both gradually subsume more and more private enterprises under the national banner. The big difference, seems to me, is that under socialism most private companies nominally belong to the government. They aren’t all literally run by the government, but the signs are clear that’s where we’re headed. Under fascism, there is a whole lot of nationalization, but no belief in the doctrine that eventually all private enterprise will disappear.
So what? Does this really make the two any different? Since socialism often has as its aim the eventual goal of pure communism, we say that it’s more radical than fascism. I say so long as it hasn’t slipped into a pure dictatorship of the proletariat, socialism is nearly indsitinguishable from fascism. To tell the two apart, all you have to go on is their advocates’ hype. But why should we take their word for it?
You can argue that particualr socialist states are more nationalized than particular fascist states. Fine. Let’s judge them on a case by case basis.
You know what? The only reason that I prefer the “fascist” label over the “socialist” label is that it makes the left even madder to be labelled “fascist” than “socialist”.
And we’ve seen how thin skinned ‘bammy is about that moniker.
On second thought, I can put it much simpler. Fascism is a form of socialism known otherwise as syndicalism. It’s not as radical as some other types of socialism, but it is socialism nonetheless.
I hardly need to back this claim up, I should think. After all, the Nazis are called Nazis because they were National Socialists.
You make a lot of sense.
“You know what? The only reason that I prefer the ‘fascist’ label over the ‘socialist’ label is that it makes the left even madder to be labelled ‘fascist’ than ‘socialist’.”
That’s a noble pursuit, but I think it’s misguided. Doing so leaves socialists open to blame conservatives when all this nationalizing fails (which it will). I could write the articles for them, “The fat cats pull the strings, and our government dances along. Wall Street once again robs the working man, taking all the profits for himself and his willing allies in Congress, at the Fed, and at the Treasury.”
Socialists are always free to distort the truth. Certainly nothing has stopped them before. But I’d rather not help them, if I have a choice.
Thanks. Much of that thinking of mine was formulated after reading the following thread about a booklet (”The Revolution Was”) written 71 years ago about the New Deal and FDR. Almost EVERY word is coming true again. I think it should be required reading!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/929392/posts
An excerpt from the booklet:
There was a Director of the Budget who was not at heart a New Dealer. One day he brought to the President the next annual budget the one of which the President afterward said: “The country, and I think most of Congress, did not fully realize the large sums which would be expended by the government this year and next, nor did they realize the great amount the Treasury would have to borrow.”
At the end of his work the Director of the Budget had written a paragraph saying simply and yet in a positive manner that notwithstanding the extraordinary activities indicated by the figures and by the appropriations that were going to be made, the government had really no thought of going into competition with private enterprise.
Having lingered for some time over this paragraph the President said: “I’m not so sure we ought to say that.”
The Director of the Budget asked, “Why not, Mr. President?”
The President did not answer immediately, but one of his aides who had been listening said: “I’ll tell you why. Who knows that we shall not want to take over all business?” ......
Business is in itself a power. In a free economic system it is an autonomous power, and generally hostile to any extension of government power. That is why a revolutionary party has to do something with it......Neither Hitler nor Mussolini ever attempted to liquidate business. They only deprived it of its power and made it serve.
How seriously the New Deal may have considered the possibility of liquidating business we do not know. Its decision, at any rate, was to embrace the alternative; and the alternative was to shackle it.
In his second annual message to Congress the President said: “In the past few months, as a result of our action, we have demanded of many citizens that they surrender certain licenses to do as they please in their business relationships; but we have asked this in exchange for the protection which the State can give against exploitation by their fellow men or by combinations of their fellow men.”
Remeber the howls of protest over the weekend at the luxury resort right after the bailout?
It was the same thing. The weekend was a sales competition prize awarded to the top independent agents. If they had reneged on it they would have been in legal jeopardy and would have destroyed their independent agent sales channel, which is a very cost efficient way of generating business.
But the media just piled on claiming it was profligate and insensitive.
If Erkel was as smart as many of the nation's mental midgets seem to think he would have been smart enough to include bonus control before the agreement was finalized, not after.
The mental midgets will applaud Erkel’s lack of wisdom and leadership.
Agreed. Snopes.com is your friend.
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