AIG Bonuses: WSJ Reports $450 Million

[Stingo]

In the outrage over bonus payments to AIG executives, there is finally common cause for progressives, conservatives, and libertarians around the country. That fact alone should scare the hell out of every politician in Washington, DC, and every financial wizard on Wall Street.

http://allspinzone.com/wp/2009/03/16/aig-bonuses-wsj-reports-450-million/

[tsuki]

1. If the Congress can demand that auto makers negate UAW contracts in

order to receive bailout money, they can demand that AIG negate their contracts to receive bailout money.

I intend to call my worthless congress critters, Allen Boyd and Bill Nelson, to tell them that.

[Stingo]

2. good luck on that call

Those guys will likely blow a lot of hot air and then roll over.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[Larkspur]

4. Why the AIG bonuses are politically explosive for Obama and the Dems

from TPM

SNIP

What's really driving this forward -- and what makes it such a dangerous moment for the White House -- is the jarring image of the administration's impotence.

Secretary Geithner found out about the bonuses. He told AIG CEO Edward Liddy it wouldn't fly. And Liddy, in a curiously imperial letter, tells Geithner that much as he is pained by the situation -- to blow it out his ass. Which he apparently proceeded to do.

SNIP

Few exchanges have so captured the disconnect that makes this situation so politically explosive. We're collectively taking our country's future in our hands, spending vast sums of money to keep these companies from suffering the consequences of their own folly and (in many cases) criminality. And in return we're receiving cavalier dictates about pay-outs and bonuses from executives who by any reasonable measure work for us -- dictates we promptly accede to. There's a beggars can't be choosers problem there. And the disconnect is so mighty that it fuels the impression that the whole enterprise is not what it seems, not what we've been told, that in addition to picking up the tab we're being played for fools.

SNIP