Some men just want to watch the world burn

[Tigermoose]

While I sympathize with the anger over AIG bonuses and the bailouts, I do not see any constructive value in the populist outrage in our camp. We elected our president, and he is doing his best to get us out of this mess. I think there is a destructive part of our psyches that just wants to seek a simple solution - destruction - when faced with an immensely complex problem. Many seem to take Alexander's approach to the gordian knot. But unfortunately after Alexander's "solution," the rope was torn and useless. We must support our elected officials in their attempt to untangle this gordian knot. Patience is a virtue that I fear we do not possess to see us through this gracefully.

This is a true test of our democratic republic. Will our goverment be able to rule wisely, or will it succumb to the passions of mob vengeance?

[zbdent]

1. now now ... you're demeaning the Joker when you compare the ReRushlicans to him ...

he does, believe it or not, have a code of honor ...

[flamingdem]

2. A greater threat still is ignoring the underlying story

See the whole article at this link:

http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/

The Real AIG Scandal - It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full.
By Eliot SpitzerPosted Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 10:41 AM ET

American International Group Inc. Click image to expand.AIG's Manhattan, N.Y., officeEverybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

For the answer to this question, we need to go back to the very first decision to bail out AIG, made, we are told, by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last fall. Post-Lehman's collapse, they feared a systemic failure could be triggered by AIG's inability to pay the counterparties to all the sophisticated instruments AIG had sold. And who were AIG's trading partners? No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes. So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.

It all appears, once again, to be the same insiders protecting themselves against sharing the pain and risk of their own bad adventure. The payments to AIG's counterparties are justified with an appeal to the sanctity of contract. If AIG's contracts turned out to be shaky, the theory goes, then the whole edifice of the financial system would collapse.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7994428/


Spitzer files suit against AIG, former CEO

ALBANY, N.Y. - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on Thursday filed a civil suit against American International Group Inc., accusing the nation’s largest insurance company and two former top executives of using “deception and fraud” to boost the company’s stock price.

The suit filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan accused AIG’s former chief executive, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, and former chief financial officer, Howard I. Smith, of orchestrating an accounting scheme that made AIG’s financial picture appear brighter than it was, misleading both investors and state regulators.

“The irony of this case is that AIG was a well-run and profitable company that didn’t need to cheat,” Spitzer said. “And yet, the former top management routinely and persistently resorted to deception and fraud in an apparent effort to improve the company’s financial results.”

[Tigermoose]

3. This is news?

I recall that the reason AIG had to be bailed out was because if it couldn't cover the insurance liabilities to other banks the whole banking system would go down. What AIG was doing was not illegal, but it was unethical. They were adhering to the letter of the law, but not the spirit. In a democratic republic governed by the rule of law, we cannot judge them legally guilty even though they are snakes.

What am I missing in this article?

[On the Road]

4. This Place Has Been Really Scary the Last Week

It is full-on mob rule with only the foggiest idea of what's going on.

The same faction that was so outraged about Bush's constitutional violations seems perfectly happy with pursuing AIG "by any means necessary" regardless of legality. Saying "but they're bad people" is no more an argument now than it was seven years ago.