Posted on 03/17/2009 5:57:31 PM PDT by tobyhill
Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Why the sudden furor, just weeks after Barack Obama's team paid out $30 billion in additional aid to the company? So far, the administration has been unable to match its actions to Obama's tough rhetoric on executive compensation. And Congress has been unable or unwilling to restrict bonuses for bailout recipients, despite some lawmakers' repeated efforts to do so.
The situation has the White House and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the defensive. The administration was caught off guard Tuesday trying to explain why Geithner had waited until last Wednesday to call AIG chief executive Edward M. Liddy and demand that the bonus payments be restructured.
Neither Obama nor Geithner learned of the impending bonus payments until last week, senior administration officials told The Associated Press late Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity about internal discussions.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
That is a big story Toby. The socialist liars first intended to use this AIG bonuses as distraction tactics to cover the massive failure and their disastrous socialist policies that they are bringing on the country but now this is backfiring on them.
This needs to be on Drudge with a Siren
The US Attorneys don’t want to lose their jobs.
I think it is providing a smokescreen for the billions of tax payers money given to foreign banks by AIG - the biggest blunder.
That too.
I hope there is actually something done about this other than another news story
Ah that Bill was signed by Obama...
So is Obama saying he signs things that he has no idea what is in it? I think that makes him the most naive President in the history of this country.
Didn’t he take the time to read it after he said it was so important that we RUSH RUSH RUSH it through. No he didn’t read it, his staff didn’t read it, no one read it they just signed away our children and grandchildrens inheritance.
and now the Soviets and China are taking advantage of this crisis to which they will actively pursue the destruction of this country. Will Obama go along willingly? Remember all totalitarian minds think alike (Never let a good crisis go to waste)
Amazing!
Congress is paying a bonus to each home owner who made a bad choice about buying.
bttt
Pretty remarkable that AP would run this story. And a ton of AP reporters contributed to it, too. In addition to Julie Hirschfield Davis, “Associated Press writers Ieva M. Augstums, Jeannine Aversa, Martin Crutsinger, Ben Feller, Jim Kuhnhenn and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.”
What next?
Dodd is now claiming he does not know how that clause got inserted in the bill....???
Another bill they didn't read before signing.
AIG is one of the main players that created the massive derivative market for mortgage notes and debt. The people who manage it are a specialized group. Derivatives are not a major one gets a degree in from Yale or Harvard. You enter the career like an apprentice and over time learn the ins and outs. Unfortunately for us, the ones who created the financial time bomb are the only ones who can slowly defuse it without it blowing up in our faces and bringing down the world financial system. Like I stated in my post, the derivative market is 55 trillion to 1.5 quadrillion in liabilities. All the GDP in the world combined cannot cover the system when it collapses. This is the big shoe that hangs over our economic stability. Google the 2005 Congressional hearings on the derivative market. Congress knew about the potential problems posed by derivatives but no one wanted to regulate it or deal with it, or assumed the doomsday scenarios improbable. The collapse of Sept 2008 says otherwise.
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