The Bailout Bonus Is A Wedge Issue.

[tekisui]

The current feigned poutrage across the airwaves from repukes, talkers and Democrats is just another wedge issue.

It is not the fault of President Obama, or Giethner, or Dodd, or Summers. It is the fault of the greedy fat cats who are so insulated in their bubble worlds, that they are incapable or relating to or empathizing with us in the lowly working/poverty class. If they had any understanding or any heart, they would have done the right thing. Not just with the bonuses, which I really don't give a shit about, but through their entire operations.

It is corporate greed that lead to this nose-diving economy, lead by deregulating by and for greed. It was greed that caused these giants to get "too-big-to-fail". And is is greed that blinds them to the real suffering going on across the country.

He said-she said fights over who allowed the greedy pigs make off with a fraction of the dough they have stolen over the last three decades is only to divide those of us on the bottom.

The issue is the Class War that we, the people are still losing. The greatest trick the Ruling Class pulls is to get us to fight amongst ourselves.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Um, do you know what the phrase "wedge issue" *means*?

[tekisui]

2. Yep, and I see splintering.

People are calling for Giethner and Summers to canned.

[Fresh_Start]

3. got to disagree with you there

our government had an obligation to adequately define the terms of the bailout including what was permissible and what needed to be tracked and reported....

they failed

[stillcool]

5. We knew that when it happened...

where was the 'outrage' then? I guess the tv didn't think it was 'outrageous' until Saturday.

[Fresh_Start]

14. I didn't know it

Yes, I knew the legislation didn't have those details but
I couldn't imagine that the money was turned over without some type of contract being signed by the recipient and the government spelling out the terms of the agreement.

Its in that contract where those type of things are specified.

[stillcool]

16. That was known the moment..

Paulson asked for it. He didn't have to say where the money was going, and the receivers did not have to say what they were doing with it. But of course, that was way back before January 20th, 2009, when it really didn't matter.

[Fresh_Start]

17. Back in November they had multi million

dollar contracts with law firms to execute the TARP funds.
If you have multi million dollar contracts with law firms, someone is writing contracts.

[natrat]

4. complete fail-those politicians are obviously and deeply in bed with the bank crooks

but yes cat fights over crumbs, when the real crime occurring now is the billions upon billions being distributed by geitner and company with no oversight, are merely a distraction. Sorry without the enabling politicians things might be different. Those billions could go to health centers or education.

[tekisui]

8. I agree, complicit politicians are in bed with the greedy crooks.

This mess is a result of decades of deregulation, and excess greed at the expense of the American people.

[4lbs]

6. The Repukes are trying to make the President use all his political capital on these bonuses so that

he'll have very little of it to push his progressive budget agenda and health/education reform through Congress.

They'll help yank back the $165 million, and pay it back to AIG in multiples on the back end in a few years, while helping to damage President Obama in the polls.

Notice how the RW is blaming President Obama for everything all the way back to Jan 2008; for not having the foresight and fighting to include bonus restrictions in the TARP when he was a Senator?

This will save the Repukes and their lobbying friends hundreds of billons in costs to reform health care and education.

Congress is now taking time out to focus on $165 million instead of the several trillion required to overhaul health care and education.

This will also help make the passage of a second stimulus (which has always been required) much more difficult, to the delight of the Repukes.

This is why they are playing along, feigning the support for the populist outrage. After all, it was the Repukes who were against any strict regulation of the TARP funds.

[moundsview]

7. Wedge issue?

It's a unity issue, the freepers are just as "outraged" as anyone. I don't think you grasp the term.

[tekisui]

11. The frame being pushed by the RWers and the M$M is that the Dems

let this happen. It is an attempt to fracture the Democratic Party, with some starting to blame Geithnre and Summers. It's a wedge, that is the only reason the repukes are paying it any attention.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Yup. That's clear.

Character assasination.

Poutrage.

[Greyhound]

10. True, but if we ever decide to actually fight it, we will win and they know it.

The parasites are concerned. They know they cannot stand if we recognize what is really being done, but so far the distraction campaign is still working.

[Fireweed247]

12. I think it is a distraction

The millions are nothing compared to the billions they are stealing right in front of our faces.

And after all our work to end the wars, Obama gets elected as the anti-war candidate....everyone has forgotten and nothing has changed.

[Possumpoint]

13. Red Herring

No one in the finance areas and government wants a close examination of the 170 billion dollars in bailout money given to AIG. Who and what did it go to? Why? It appears that many of the recipients were banks also receiving bailout money. Others were banks out side of the USA. Why should US taxpayer money be given to banks overseas? What adverse action to the USA would have occurred if we said no?

The bailouts are being used to make elites and fat cats whole when they should have been allowed to fail and fall into the shit they created. Yes, there may very well have been world wide hardship involved. Rebuilding on a sound financial footing and elimination of the debt based economy would be a great benefit.

This question of bonus money was raised as a misdirection campaign to avoid answering more important questions. If the 170 billion was a dollar the bonus money was less then a penny.

No more bailouts!

[leftstreet]

15. It's no different than Reagan's Welfare Queens in Cadillacs

165 million in bonuses

170 billion

in bailouts since September

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29714402/

The AIG bonuses were revealed over the weekend. It also was disclosed that AIG used $90 billion-plus in federal aid to pay foreign and domestic banks, some of which had received their own multibillion-dollar U.S. government bailouts.

The recipients included Goldman Sachs, at $12.9 billion, and three European banks — France’s Societe Generale at $11.9 billion, Germany’s Deutsche Bank at $11.8 billion, and Britain’s Barclays PLC at $8.5 billion. Merrill Lynch, which also is undergoing federal scrutiny of its bonus plans and which is now part of Bank of America, had received $6.8 billion as of Dec. 31.

The money went to banks to cover their losses on complex mortgage investments, as well as for collateral needed for other transactions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?hp

Word of the bonuses last week stirred such deep consternation inside the Obama administration that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.

The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company’s senior executives and 6,400 employees across the sprawling corporation. Mr. Geithner last week pressured A.I.G. to cut the $9.6 million going to the top 50 executives in half and tie the rest to performance.