Vote No Bailout!!! [Archive] - The Ross Show Forums

nobs

09-23-2008, 01:19 PM

I have watched this unfold on TV and listened to the top financial people.
I do not want to see this country go into economical collapse.
You must think about this logically, not emotionally.

As a country - we spend billions bailing everything and everybody out.

I don't want to see a bailout with no change and where heads won't roll. The first to go will be the golden parachutes.

If we let the financial backbone of this country crumble (and this all goes back to the mortgage crisis where these companies leveraged their holdings) then this country will be in deep shit.

I am looking for a way out that will cost the least bleeding. We are in a global economy.

I WANT people to work and be able to survive. The subject is long, deep and involved and something must be done.

I don't want to see the USA go through a prolonged recession or a depression.

Don't you think that the financial geniuses in Washington and on Wall Street (and even at your local bank) know a whole lot more than the average person who only sees the word "bailout" and hits the panic button. We will not be giving the money to these companies carte blanc, there will be a lot of strings attached.

Please look at the side of NOT bailing them out and what can happen. There would be a domino effect and people like you (unless you have a stash of bucks or gold) just won't survive.

My son is in the restaurant business. He has a little luncheonette. His wife waits tables. His expenses keep going up - he can't raise his prices because people just don't have the money. He has been in business 11 years and this is the first year he is really hurting. Some of the brokers from the larger banks and firms come into his place. Finance is a subject that has been well versed there.

This mess was a lot of years in the making and is not as simple as "bailing out banks". Have you spoken with any financial advisers, Kris? Any people that know how and why this came about and why we have to do something. Have you thought about what will happen if we don't "bailout" the situation. Do you think it's just a matter of saying "NO" and life goes back to normal? This can start a domino effect on the world economy - world wide depression frightens me. This is not a rich vs. poor subject. No bailout, no change in regulation and the rich will continue to destroy our very economy for personal gain. Do you think by not having a bailout that the rich CEOs are going to suffer. I assure you that their "parachute" is already deeply buried in offshore accounts. I am thinking of the middle class who will suffer the most (and the poorer people on this planet).

Maybe the people you have talked to aren't informed about the subject. They may be thinking the same way most who sign these petitions think.
This is a situation that the government helped create. Now is their chance to reform it and make sure it never happens again.

Maybe you could explain to me WHY the people and you don't want a bailout (it is not as simple as you think it is - you will have to do your homework) and what caused this to happen and what the future holds for our economy.
I would like nothing more than to hear some more data on this subject.

Please tell me WHY, tell me how much the people you talked to know about this situation and it's far reaching effects. Maybe I have missed something.
Do they know the complete story or is it just a knee jerk reaction? Maybe I am just not well informed on this subject.

Unfortunately, the government must STOP the bleeding now. Not once the "victim" is dead.
Any of you have a credit card? Well, if the economy fails, you can kiss credit goodbye or (I hope you have been reading those little agreements that come in the mail) they could raise your interest rate to 33% overnight. Economy 101.

What Wall Street needs is to have the government on it's ass BIG TIME. It has been way too long that they have done what they wanted with little regulation. THAT is how we got to this point. The SEC needs to be shaken up big time and our Federal Regulatory Agencies need to be held accountable and I would imagine a lot of re-vamping will HAVE to go on.

It is my opinion and I don't expect agreement. I do expect my opinion to be just a valid as anyone else's. It was not made without a lot of reading, listening and talking. And I do know a tad about the subject. I know the companies involved, whose heads are on the block, which CEOs will be the first out the door and what changes will likely come of this lesson. I listened to every word of Bush' plan and I know what Congress wants in return.
I have already written to my legislators in support of the bailout (with my own thoughts on how it should be implemented and the immense changes that need to be made). I do not want to see what would happen if the government doesn't do anything. These folks aren't dumb, Kris. Finance is what they know.

Luckily, the government and our legislators know the nature of the internet and these "petitions" will not influence what has to be a very hard decision.
(I hope). One board posts them and they spread like wildfire and how many people sign them that don't even vote or have a clue?

This is not the first big bailout in history nor will it be the last. It is an election year and the backbone of our economy (and, hence, the world economy) needs this bailout and shakeup. It needs to be rebuilt with ironclad rules and laws to prevent this happening again.
We send so much more to other countries (and of course, war) but when it comes to helping our own stay afloat, as soon as the word "bailout" was heard, everyone wants to sign a petition. When the domino effect starts affecting your lives, then maybe you will understand.
After all, they (the petitioners) know SO much more than all of the financial minds and ivy league financial wizards that take up residence in this countries think tank.

Even both presidential candidates agree that this needs to be done, what they don't agree on is the "how" and the strings.
Both candidates have already met with their financial advisers and the decisions WILL be ironed out and ,of course, compromises will be made.

Bottom line here is not our government bailing out our economy, but when and how much do you want to bleed first.

This whole thing goes back to the mortgage mess and falsely inflated real estate and the government allowing these banks to leverage the money four fold and the whole thing imploded.

The government is NOT giving any money to anyone personally, it is trying to keep companies and banks from going under. It is trying to save our country from depression (and possibly world wide depression).
For those of you who haven't figured it out, we are already in a recession.
The next step is the hard one.

If I have any advice at all it would be to read, educate yourselves on the economy of the past dozen years and decide what is best for our country and economy - keep in mind we know operate in a global economy.
We need to stay a number 1 world power, especially with Iran and nuclear weapons entering our future.
Talk with each other about the hows and whys and what ifs. Decide based on logic and what is best.

This is probably more than I have ever wrote her and i assure you, more than I ever will.

Kris, I am sorry if you misunderstood my question - I know exactly why everyone is running to sign an internet petition. I just wanted to have both sides of this nasty coin covered. It is not as simple as it appears.

I just think that a lot of people really don't know what needs to be known about this mess.

Miv, you made an excellent point and that is exactly what the candidates and Congress are trying to iron out as we speak.

mewsicmama

09-23-2008, 01:30 PM

Very well stated Nobs. You aren't the only one who has those feelings - I do too.

Shari

bluekazoo

09-23-2008, 01:44 PM

I write my Senators and Congresswoman (although she's pretty worthless, IMO) on a regular basis ... I've written them about the bailout, expressing my views ...

I won't sign a blanket petition saying no to a bailout - I just want them to move slowly enough so that they can do it right ... and I wouldn't under any circumstances give Paulson all the power with no oversight. I also want to see the CEOs of these miserable banks cut off from making money on the deal (I actually liked McCain's idea that none of them should receive more salary than the highest paid gov't official - seems fair since their businesses are now going to basically 'belong' to the government ... I do NOT want to see them rewarded for screwing it all up so badly - they're messing with MY retirement money, among other things, and I'm furious).

We are upset as can be here at our house about this ... we're watching our money disappear (slowly for now, but who knows what will happen tomorrow or the next day?) ... WE didn't cause this problem ... WE don't even have any debt to speak of - bad or otherwise ... WE didn't buy a house we couldn't afford at a rate that was too good to be true, based on false equity or improper criteria. And WE sure as hell haven't made a killing in the market (or anywhere else for that matter). I am literally mere months away from my target retirement date, and - had this not happened - I'd be good to go ... their screwup means I will work longer, to replace money that I'd already saved once.

Grrrrr ... I don't even like talking about it ... I haven't worked nearly 40 years only to find out I'm going to have to work another 5 ... or 10 ... or more ... because of rich people's greed.

I should have put my money in the mattress.

paleryder

09-23-2008, 01:59 PM

This is the greatest stagecoach holdup in history.

They wanted that clause for a good reason......

I posted this at Ghost Town:

This is an attempt to ramrod this thru before the next administration takes over. Using fear tactics. Election day is 6 weeks away. AMAZING... the timing of this emergency.

Bush is going to leave us with somewhere between $1.5 and possibly $3 TRILLION dollars in debt when you throw in his war and all the other shit he spent money on.

Riding off into the sunset with a wagon train full of gold......

I saw a report that $100 billion dollars would be enough to provide FREE healthcare to EVERYONE in the U.S. for one year.

I think that's a nice stimulus for this economy. They could provide free heathcare for some 10 to 20 years for EVERYONE.

Instead, they claim it's imperative to give this back to the greedy parties that started this mess.

And the gall to insert that clause.......

nobs

09-23-2008, 02:19 PM

Kazoo

I am so sorry. It is the many, many people like yourself whom I am thinking about.

fountainhouse

09-23-2008, 02:33 PM

I was initially for the bailout until I remembered something that has chilled my enthusiasm.

This MUST ACT NOW EMERGENCY is brought to us by the same folks who brought us the MUST ACT NOW EMERGENCY called the Iraq War Resolution.

This crisis has been years in the making; it'll wait another few weeks for cooler heads with bigger, better brains.

paleryder

09-23-2008, 02:39 PM

From GHOST TOWM:

Paleryder: They're all in on it. .....Fed Head says U.S should pay TOP DOLLAR for these worthless loans. :thud:

Bloomberg....

Bernanke Signals U.S. Should Pay More for Bad Debt (Update2)

By Craig Torres and Kathleen Hays

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled that the government should buy devalued assets at above-market values to make its proposed $700 billion rescue package most effective in combating the financial crisis.

``Accounting rules require banks to value many assets at something close to a very low fire-sale price rather than the hold-to-maturity price,'' Bernanke said in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee today. ``If the Treasury bids for and then buys assets at a price close to the hold-to-maturity price, there will be substantial benefits.''

Bernanke's remarks, an unusual departure from his prepared testimony, come as lawmakers and the Bush administration negotiate a rescue plan aimed at easing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed chief said paying prices higher than the bad assets would fetch in the open market would help ``unfreeze'' credit markets and aid the economy.

Analysts said Bernanke is essentially advocating that government use a pricing model that assumes that the debt will be paid in full over a long period of time. That is different from the mark-to-market model used by investment banks that prices assets at what they are worth on a given day.

The risk is that the model does not provide transparent pricing of the assets taxpayers are taking on, said Ann Rutledge, partner at R&R Consulting in New York, a firm that specializes in structured finance. Many of the securities ``are not going to pay at maturity,'' Rutledge said.

nobs

09-23-2008, 03:03 PM

Don't mean much, Josey, Bernanke's just mouthing off because he knows he is on his way out the door.

When you need a hand out (hand up, bail out) you don't get the option of stating the terms. There are a lot of bad feelings and a LOT of shit to pay in this one. The list is out, who goes - who stays and what the terms will be.
This is one crisis that the Federal Reserve chairman will not dictate. He's out and he knows it.

By the time all is said and done, HOPEFULLY, it will become a stronger, better market with no short selling, over leveraging etc. and rules in place and implemented so that we NEVER have to see this kind of mess again.
I, myself, do not wish to sleep on a subway grate and hustle for food at my age!!!

Many hard working folks feel exactly the way Kazoo does.

And if we do go back to sewing our money in a mattress, then we're screwed.

We HAVE to get this economy straightened out. Or we will have a rerun of the Depression and WW2 (only it will be war with Iran & the Middle East and it will be nuclear). I still have my collection of WW2 ration booklets, tickets and stamps - I don't want to see that outcome.

I guess I look at the world differently. All of these clowns making noise will not be there when all is said and done.

Old expression - talk is cheap.
Just once, I would like to see peace and prosperity again - sort of like it was between Korea & Nam (the Cold War aside). :0002: <<<< still keeping the faith, y'all!

paleryder

09-23-2008, 03:22 PM

All of these clowns making noise will not be there when all is said and done.

....and that's another fishy thing about this emergency. That they don't want anyone, any court, or any authority poking around their books to see where all this loot is going REALLY stinks. ...and they're wanting to walk out the door with no questions asked? no accountability? ......Just "Trust Us"....?

...and they admit that despite all this emergency funding there is no guarantee it will work. The ship is sinking and the FUCKING RATS are demanding that they get first shots at the lifeboats?

I suppose that will pave the way for the next crisis that needs "the sky is falling" funding.

They are stealing the loot faster than they can print it.

nobs

09-23-2008, 05:01 PM

PR

They WILL be held accountable - and, bottom line - they will be gone. One of the first things I think will go are THEIR golden parachutes.
That's where a lot of the problems started and kept on going on Wall Street - they were not being held accountable, they were allowed to encourage short selling and allowed to leverage and re-leverage the mortgage loans where so many lost or are losing their homes.
I want to see accountability - a NEW way of doing business. Wall St. has been corrupt for many years.
I don't want to see people who have worked all their lives get screwed. If it means a bailout to obtain some sanity and some STRICT rules on the trading floor AND to save the house of cards they built from total collapse, then so be it.
We have certainly paid PLENTY of BIG bucks for a lot of underhanded crap in this country, at least this will be open for all to see and will do something to save our very lives - economic collapse would be a total disaster.

The dollar won't be worth the paper it's written on.

As I said - think logic - not emotion. Do you think I like what was done???? I would like to hang some of the bastards involved. But that isn't going to do diddley squat for tomorrows economical well being and the strength of this country.

I think that the right heads will roll and that we will finally have some accountability. And laws to prevent what happened.

If I was to sign ANY petition - it would be 'name specific' to who I want gone and that they not get anything for their misdeeds - but I would certainly want my government to prevent collapse and bail out these banks for the good of the American people.

Or maybe we can just spend the money on war and bailing out the criminal governments who have allowed their own people to starve???
We have outsourced just about everything (that big sucking sound) and we really have a small manufacturing base. The one thing that has kept this country powerful is it's financial power.

Maybe I just see the world differently. I don't want to see a generation of people (or more) suffer for this. I don't want it to drag out until the entire market collapses - I want it fixed in the easiest and best possible way.

Now, excuse me - a hot shower is calling.

Thank you for allowing me a different POV on this disaster.

toke

09-23-2008, 05:01 PM

Bob Herbert has a little dose of reality in the NYT:

A Second Opinion?

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 22, 2008

Does anyone think it’s just a little weird to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by the very people who brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

How about a second opinion?

Everything needs much closer scrutiny in these troubled times because no one even knows who is in charge, much less what is going on. Have you ever seen a president who was more irrelevant than George W. Bush is right now?

The treasury secretary, Henry Paulson — heralded as King Henry on the cover of Newsweek — has been handed the reins of government, and he’s galloping through the taxpayers’ money like a hard-charging driver in a runaway chariot race.

“We need this legislation in a week,” he said on Sunday, referring to the authorization from Congress to implement his hastily assembled plan to bail out the wildly profligate U.S. financial industry. The plan stands at $700 billion as proposed, but could go to a trillion dollars or more.

Mr. Paulson spoke on the Sunday morning talk shows about “bad lending practices” and “irresponsible borrowing” and “irresponsible lending” and “illiquid assets.”

The sky was falling, he seemed to be saying, and if the taxpayers didn’t pony up $700 billion in the next few days, all would be lost. No time to look at the fine print. Hurry, hurry, said the treasury secretary.

His eyes, as he hopped from one network camera to another, said, as salesmen have been saying since the dawn of time: “Trust me.”

With all due respect to Mr. Paulson, who is widely regarded as a smart and fine man, we need to slow this process down. We got into this mess by handing out mortgages like lollipops to people who paid too little attention to the fine print, who in many cases didn’t understand it or didn’t care about it.

And the people who always pretended to know better, who should have known better, the mortgage hucksters and the gilt-edged, high-rolling, helicopter-flying Wall Street financiers, kept pushing this bad paper higher and higher up the pyramid without looking at the fine print themselves, not bothering to understand it, until all the crap came raining down on the rest of us.

Yes, the system came perilously close to collapse last week and needs to be stabilized as quickly as possible. But we don’t know yet that King Henry’s fiat, his $700 billion solution, is the best solution. Like the complex mortgage-based instruments at the heart of this debacle, nobody has a real grasp yet of the vast implications of Mr. Paulson’s remedy.

Experts need some reasonable amount of time — I’m talking about days, not weeks — to home in on the weak points, the loopholes, the potential unintended consequences of a bailout of this magnitude.

The patchwork modifications being offered by Democrats in Congress are insufficient. Reasonable estimates need to be made of the toll to be taken on taxpayers. Reasonable alternatives need to be heard.

I agree with the economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, that while the government needs to move with dispatch, there is also a need to make sure that taxpayers’ money is used only where “absolutely necessary.”

Lobbyists, bankers and Wall Street types are already hopping up and down like over-excited children, ready to burst into the government’s $700 billion piñata. This widespread eagerness is itself an indication that there is something TOO SWEET about the Paulson plan.

This is not supposed to be a good deal for business.
“The idea is that you’re coming here because you would be going bankrupt otherwise,” said Mr. Baker. “You’re coming here because you have no alternative. You’re getting a bad deal, but it’s better than going out of business. That’s how it should be structured.”

The markets tanked again on Monday as oil prices skyrocketed. Time is indeed short, but alternative voices desperately need to be heard because the people who have been running the economy for so long — who have ruined it — cannot be expected to make things right again in 48 or 96 hours.

Mr. Paulson himself was telling us during the summer that the economy was sound, that its long-term fundamentals were “strong,” that growth would rebound by the end of the year, when most of the slump in housing prices would be over.

He has been wrong every step of the way, right up until early last week, about the severity of the economic crisis. As for President Bush, the less said the better.

The free-market madmen who treated the American economy like a giant casino have had their day. It’s time to drag them away from the tables and into the sunlight of reality.

I've got to admit...it's hard to have faith in Paulson, when he's been so blatantly wrong...and it sure as hell seems like it was for political reasons. No matter the CW...he sure sounds like another Bushie, doesn't he?

kim

09-23-2008, 05:04 PM

ah sorry / i mis-read something feingold said about something else / my earlier post was not correct...

posting this concerning his stand on this (he posted this on his website yesterday):

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout

September 22, 2008

“I want to get answers to the serious questions about the bailout plan before I decide whether or not to support it. I want to know how the taxpayers’ interests will be protected, what the real cost of the plan could be, if the plan will be funded or just piled on top of our already mountainous debt, if it will include protections to prevent something like this in the future, and if the executives of the companies that are rescued by taxpayers will continue to receive multimillion dollar compensation packages. I recognize that Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke have a tough job, but the administration is asking Congress to provide nearly one-third of the total federal budget to the Treasury Department for this rescue plan. These and other questions need to be answered before we decide whether or not to approve it.”

--------

paleryder

09-23-2008, 05:23 PM

Look familiar? :1jester:

Housing Doom:

From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson

Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check.

We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson

kim

09-23-2008, 05:27 PM

hahaha where'd you get that...?

here's obama's statement from today:

Tue Sep 23, 11:47 AM Pacific
Obama's Plan To Protect Taxpayers and Homeowners

Update: Obama introduced a some new ideas, including his most explicit taxpayer protection language yet. He said that taxpayers need to be treated as if they were investors in this plan and floated the idea of imposing a fee on financial services firms after the market recovers to help pay for the bailout. He also suggested helping keep people in their homes by allowing the government to directly puchases mortgages instead of limiting it to mortgage-backed securities. Obama also explicitly delinked the stimulus plan from the bailout, but repeated his call for a stimulus plan.

###

Original post: Here's the full text of Obama's remarks at today's press conference:

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama-as prepared for delivery
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - Tampa, Florida

Yesterday, the President said that Congress should pass his proposal to ease the crisis on Wall Street without significant changes or improvements.

Now, there are many to blame for causing the current crisis, starting with the speculators who gamed the system and the regulators who looked the other way. But all of us now have a stake in solving it and saving our financial institutions from collapse. Because if we don't, the jobs and life savings of millions will be put at risk.

Given that fact, the President's stubborn inflexibility is both unacceptable and disturbingly familiar. This is not the time for my-way-or-the-highway intransigence from anyone involved. It's not the time for fear or panic. It's the time for resolve, responsibility, and reasonableness.

And it is wholly unreasonable to expect that American taxpayers would or should hand this Administration or any Administration a $700 billion blank check with absolutely no oversight or conditions when a lack of oversight in Washington and on Wall Street is exactly what got us into this mess.

Now that the American people are being called upon to finance this solution, the American people have the right to certain protections and assurances from Washington.

First, the plan must include protections to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to further reward the bad behavior of irresponsible CEOs on Wall Street. There has been talk that some CEOs may refuse to cooperate with this plan if they have to forgo multi-million-dollar salaries. I cannot imagine a position more selfish and greedy at a time of national crisis. And I would like to speak directly to those CEOs right now: Do not make that mistake. You are stewards for workers and communities all across our country who have put their trust in you. With the enormous rewards you have reaped come responsibilities, and we expect and demand that you to live up to them. This plan cannot be a welfare program for Wall Street executives.

Second, the power to spend $700 billion of taxpayer money cannot be left to the discretion of one man, no matter who he is or which party he is from. I have great respect for Secretary Paulson, but he cannot act alone. We should set up an independent board that includes some of the most respected figures in our country, chosen by Democrats and Republicans, to provide oversight and accountability at every step of the way. I am heartened that Secretary Paulson appeared to be softening on this position in his testimony this morning.

Third, if taxpayers are being asked to underwrite hundreds of billions of dollars to solve this crisis, they must be treated like investors. The American people should share in the upside as Wall Street recovers. There are different ways to accomplish this, including putting equity into these firms instead of buying their troubled assets.

But regardless of how we structure the plan, if the government makes any kind of profit on this deal, we must give every penny back to the taxpayers who put up the money in the first place. And after the economy recovers, we should institute a Financial Stability Fee on the entire financial services industry to repay any losses to the American people and make sure we are never asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes again. We can ask taxpayers to make an investment in the stability of our economy, but we cannot ask them to hand their money over to Wall Street without some expectation of return.

Fourth, the final plan must provide help to families who are struggling to stay in their homes. We cannot simply bailout Wall Street without helping the millions of innocent homeowners who are facing foreclosure.

There are a number of ways we can accomplish this. For example, we should consider giving the government the authority to purchase mortgages directly instead of simply mortgage-backed securities. In the past, such an approach has allowed taxpayers to profit as the housing market recovered. This is not simply a question of looking after homeowners, it's doubtful that the economy as a whole can recover without the restoration of our housing sector, including a rebound in the home values that have suffered dramatically in recent months.

Finally, the American people need to know that we feel as great a sense of urgency about the emergency on Main Street as we do about the emergency on Wall Street. I have repeatedly called on President Bush and Senator McCain to join me in supporting an economic stimulus plan for working families - a plan that would help folks cope with rising food and gas prices, save one million jobs by rebuilding our schools and roads, help states and cities avoid painful budget cuts and tax increases, and help homeowners stay in their homes.

Let me be clear - we shouldn't include this stimulus package into this particular legislation, but as we solve the immediate crisis on Wall Street, we should move with the same sense of urgency to help Main Street.

It is absolutely wrong to suggest that we cannot protect American taxpayers while still stabilizing our market and saving our financial system from collapse. We can and must do both.

In summary, there is no doubt negotiations over the next few days will be difficult. I will continue to keep in close touch with Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and the leaders of Congress to ensure that we can work in a bipartisan manner to get this done as quickly as possible. Our country is being tested by a very serious crisis. We are all in this together, and we must come together as Democrats and Republicans, on Wall Street and on Main Street to solve it. And with the proper spirit of cooperation, I know we can.

--------------

- i got the above from the jed report here's the link:

http://www.jedreport.com/2008/09/obamas-plan-to-protect-taxpaye.html

paleryder

09-23-2008, 05:52 PM

One option may be to authorize the $700 billion in installments such as $150 billion at a time, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said. ``Significant modifications'' to the Paulson plan ``are necessary,'' he said in a statement after the hearing.

I've been reading tons of stuff and can't remember or find a quote where Paulson was quoted as saying something along the lines of.....No, a partial funding would suggest that we're not serious about adressing this crisis.

And Bush is reported to be unhappy with limits on CEO severance packages but may yield.

It' all bullshit. Total bullshit and lies. They are running out of time to pull this heist off

The FED says to OVERPAY for this crap?

Paulsom says NOW...We need it now. Danger ahead.....the economy is collapsing?

No oversight?

I say wait till after the election. Let's see if the sky falls

and this BREAKING NEWS....The FBI announced (within the last 30 minutes) they were investigating Fannie , Freddy, Lehman's and AIG for fraud that contributed to this meltdown on Wall Street.

You know ......wonder what those folks feel like who have lost their job or had their home foreclosed on......How do they feel about bailing out these theives they booted them to the curb? They'll have to pony up too...

paleryder

09-24-2008, 06:19 AM

Paulson, Cheney, and Fed Head Bernanke won't like this assessment. :1guitarpl

Alarms sounded in push for $700 billion bailout
September 24, 2008 - 3:12am

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson aren't saying it will be a return to the Great Depression if the government doesn't pass a $700 billion bailout bill, but their views are decidedly on the gloomy side. However, private economists don't all share that assessment.

However, some analysts said the administration's proposal to use $700 billion of taxpayer money to buy up those bad loans from financial institutions isn't necessarily a panacea for the country's current problems.

They noted that the dollar's value against foreign currencies took a nosedive as information about the plan was processed by foreign investors, who were worried that the federal budget deficit, already projected to hit an all-time high next year, will surge even more to pay for the bailout.

Analysts said that as more is known about the Paulson plan, there are also questions being raised about its complexity and whether it would actually work well enough to get credit markets unfrozen.

The bottom line, these analysts said, was that if Congress does not pass the administration's proposal, the economy won't suddenly tip into a far worse situation than it faces at present, where it is already flirting with a recession.

"If we don't get the Paulson plan, there will be some pain and suffering, but I don't think it will be the end of the world," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University, Channel Islands. "We have gone through tough times before, but we have a resilient economy and we will rebound."

wtop (http://www.wtop.com/?nid=116&sid=1484081)

krisinluck

09-24-2008, 06:50 AM

IF handled correctly, I have no problem with the bail out.

I DO have a problem with the plan as it is right now. And with all this hurryhurryhurry OMG the end is near bullshit being fed to us right now.

If the investigation into Fannie, Freddy, Lehmans and AIG uncovered fraud, I want those fuckers in a real prison, not some sweet country club with locks on the door. Screw that. Freeze their accounts - all of them. Let their spouses and children go stand in line for food stamps and energy assistance like so many others are having to do right now.

Of course that will never happen. Although I bet there are at least a few hardened cons who would love to make some sweet CEO their bitch.

STOP PROTECTING THEM.

Gah. I have to get off here because it just freaks me right out that we are in this mess.

paleryder

09-24-2008, 07:09 AM

September 23, 2008, 3:07 pm
Good ideas and lies

Daniel Davies, in one of the great blog posts of this era, laid down a key principle:

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

He was talking about the selling of the Iraq war, but it applies more generally.

So, this morning Hank Paulson told a whopper:

We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.

What the proposal actually did, of course, was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

I’m not playing gotcha here. This is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.

nytimes (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/good-ideas-and-lies/)

paleryder

09-24-2008, 07:14 AM

David Hawkins of Congressional Quarterly:

The bailout would cost each person in the U.S. $2,300

Average family of four ......only $9,200

It's only money. :butt:

paleryder

09-24-2008, 07:49 AM

Paulson wants full sum NOW. Guess they can't trust a new administration to give them the whole package.

Uncle George may have to grab some primetime to get our attention. :smokin

To rally support, the White House is actively considering a primetime speech to the nation by President Bush prior to House floor debate. And given the anger among voters at home and closeness of November’s elections, the political nervousness among members of both parties is not surprising.

“I don’t think a single call to my office on this proposal has been positive,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told Paulson at the Banking committee hearing. Even Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker with close ties to Wall Street, urged Paulson to consider scaling back the $700 billion request or accepting an arrangement where the money could become available in tranches after the plan has had time to prove itself.

Amid continued turmoil in the markets, which fell again Tuesday, Paulson said that this would be “a grave mistake,” and that the full sum is needed to signal a real commitment to address the crisis. But both he and Bernanke acknowledged that it will take time to put the elaborate auction mechanisms in place, and Schumer estimated that an initial commitment of $150 billion could be sufficient for the remainder of this year.

“It’s a huge sum of money, even $150 billion,” Schumer said. “And the confidence of the markets will be determined by how well it works initially, not by how much money you have in your pocket.”

krisinluck

09-24-2008, 01:49 PM

I would have been willing to pony up some cash straight to Monica if she'd given that loser a blow job so we could have been rid of him years ago. Geezus.

I got a response from my "form letter" to Feingold:The Administration has sent its proposed plan to Congress for consideration. Before I decide whether or not to support it, I want to know how the taxpayers' interests will be protected, what the real cost of the plan could be, if the plan will be funded or just piled on top of our already mountainous debt, if it will include protections to prevent something like this in the future, and if the executives of the companies that are rescued by taxpayers will continue to receive multimillion dollar compensation packages. I recognize that Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke have a tough job, but the administration is asking Congress to provide nearly one-third of the total federal budget to the Treasury Department for this rescue plan.This is exactly what I expected of him - the dude rocks, man. I was hoping HE would run for President this year. He's called for censure, he's stomped and caused all kinds of hell for this administration. Love the guy. Seriously.

paleryder

09-24-2008, 02:07 PM

Do you really want to trust this crew? Barbershop quartet or four used car salesmen? Take the suits and ties off, put'em in orange jumpsuits and they could EASILY fit in as four cons up against the parole board.

Paulson objects to limits on "golden parachutes"........but didn't get his way

http://photos.imageevent.com/joseywales/westerns/websize/lawmakers.jpg

Drama whores with an agenda....... :JapA003:

Bloomberg:

Bernanke Sees `Grave Threats' to Financial Stability (Update3)

By Craig Torres

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. is facing ``grave threats'' to financial stability and warned that the credit crisis has started to damage household and business spending.

more

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNWXdJO0wXbg&refer=home)

Washington Post:

McCain Denies Reid's Claim He Backs Bailout

By Michael D. Shear and Robert Barnes
NEW YORK -- Sen. John McCain said this morning that he has not assured Democratic leaders of his support for the financial bailout package, disputing comments by Majority Leader Harry Reid that he had.

Reid told reporters Tuesday that, in a private conversation Monday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson assured Reid that McCain would eventually back the bailout legislation, which Reid has set as a precondition for approving the bill to tone down the partisan atmosphere surrounding the controversial issue. "I've got some good news," said Reid, adding that it "appears" McCain would back the package.

Before a meeting of his economic brain-trust, McCain denied that report.

Told of Reid's comment that the GOP nominee would vote for the plan put forth by Paulson, McCain said, "I did not say that."

Senior McCain adviser Mark Salter told reporters later that "he hasn't said that to Paulson or to Reid or to anybody else. He hasn't said that to me."

Last night, McCain urged Congress to move quickly to improve and then pass bailout legislation, telling reporters after a plant tour in Freeland, Mich., "Further inaction is simply not an option."

more

washingtonpost (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/24/mccain_denies_reids_claim_he_b.html)

Washington Post:

Bernanke Tells Congress That U.S. Economy Is Faltering

By Neil Irwin and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 24, 2008; 2:08 PM

The key legs that have propped up the U.S. economy so far this year appear to be weakening, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today, as he laid out a case for Congress to quickly pass a $700 billion bailout proposal to keep the financial crisis from growing.

more

washingtonpost (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092401076.html)

Washington Post:

Bailout Proposal Meets Bipartisan Outrage
Lawmakers Balk as Officials Press Case For Quick Action

By Lori Montgomery, Paul Kane and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 24, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration sent some of its most powerful figures to Capitol Hill yesterday to rally support for a $700 billion plan to revive the U.S. financial system, but they encountered stiff resistance from lawmakers who are deeply skeptical of the proposal and angered by the administration's push for its speedy approval.

The vice president got a warmer reception during a luncheon with Senate Republicans. But afterward, key GOP senators announced that they now agree with Democratic demands that the bailout package set limits on executive salaries at financial institutions that participate in the program. Democrats have argued that chief executives whose companies accept taxpayer money should not be permitted to pocket millions of dollars in bonuses or big severance packages known as "golden parachutes."

Paulson and the White House have objected to limits on executive compensation, saying limits would discourage successful firms from participating in the bailout. "These are not all weak or troubled firms that own mortgage-backed securities," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "They were not necessarily irresponsible players, and so you have to be careful about how you deal with them."

But Republican senators, many of whom face voters in six weeks, have concluded otherwise. "I think executive compensation ought to be part of this," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters. "I think the taxpayers should expect no less than strict limits on what kind of executive compensation might be possible for those involved in these partially government-controlled enterprises."

more

washingtonpost (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/23/AR2008092300284.html?hpid=topnews)

....and Bush will address the nation tonight at 9pm EST

MCCAIN SUSPENDS CAMPAIGN TO FOCUS ON ECONOMY; WANTS DEBATE DELAY

drudgereport (http://www.drudgereport.com/)

bluekazoo

09-24-2008, 02:21 PM

Sure, McCain is now 9 points behind in the polls and so he wants to 'suspend' ...

I'm so disgusted with him and his sleazy ads, just heard another one on tv an hour ago ... how anyone is unable to see right through his games and his real mission with this so-called 'campaign suspension) is beyond me ...

I'm beginning to hope now that they ultimately decide that this mess wasn't created in a week and it doesn't have to be solved in a week ... my personal savings be damned, let's postpone the bailout until AFTER the election.

krisinluck

09-24-2008, 02:39 PM

Rushing it through is the WRONG thing to do. Even the politicians (for the most part) seem to realize that.

Wow. This is really something else...

zeldas

09-24-2008, 02:46 PM

HaHa
Of course McCain's decision to suspend the debates have nothing to do with the polls. They do not even want him there, because it will bring politics to the table. McCain is just playing politics.

All this bailout is one big bandaid.
America needs the debates to judge who is best to lead the country.

krisinluck

09-24-2008, 03:13 PM

All this bailout is one big bandaid.
America needs the debates to judge who is best to lead the country.A-freakin'-MEN

bluekazoo

09-24-2008, 03:38 PM

A bandaid AND a way for their rich buddies to line their pockets one last time before they're booted out of office ...

Bastards, the lot of them.

paleryder

09-24-2008, 05:03 PM

Paulson Retreats on Executive Pay, Equity Measures in Bailout

By John Brinsley and Craig Torres

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, facing an outcry from Congress, told lawmakers he's willing to accept changes in the Bush administration's plan to buy troubled assets from financial firms.

Reversing his position, Paulson said he would accept limits on executive pay in his proposed $700 billion taxpayer-funded rescue plan for the banking industry. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said Paulson also ``accepts the fact'' that the plan will enable the government to take equity stakes in participating firms.

more

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axIU2XDqKiYg&refer=home)

Bard77

09-24-2008, 07:12 PM

His handlers ought not let him engage Obama in the arena of debate.

Where 'men of elequent words' win.

It would be Kennedy Nixon sweating ALL over again.

How many remember?

Bard77

09-24-2008, 07:13 PM

Eloquent.

bluekazoo

09-25-2008, 05:19 AM

Source (http://www.electoral-vote.com/)

McCain Suspends Campaign, Cancels First Debate

John McCain suspended his campaign, stopped running ads, and said he would not participate in the first debate scheduled for tomorrow at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. He said that the nation is on the brink of a serious recession and this is no time for politics. McCain has been in the Senate 25 years. He knows precisely what will happen if he barges into the office of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate banking committee and announces: "OK, Outta here, I'm taking over now. Dodd's reaction would not be printable on a family Website like this one and McCain would be instantly and unceremoniously shown the door. There are two people responsible for writing banking bills: Dodd and his House counterpart Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). If Dodd wants input from the Republicans on this, he will ask the ranking member on his committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). McCain and Obama play no role and McCain knows that very well.

So why did McCain propose cancelling the debate? In a word: politics. By flying into D.C. as the savior he might appear as a man of action to people who don't know how the Senate works. The reality of course, is that Obama and McCain's appearance in Dodd's office would instantly turn the entire event into a political circus. If left alone, Dodd can come up with a bill a lot faster than with McCain, Obama, and the entire national press corps in the room "helping." A second point is that by pulling all his TV ads, he saves money, something Obama has more of. McCain may need that money at the end of October, so a penny not spent now is a penny available in October.

McCain not only cancelled his ads, he also cancelled his appearance on David Letterman's show. Letterman wasn't so happy. Here is a video of his reaction.

Obama's response to McCain's surprise move was a speech hammering on the need for a good, bipartisan bill that protects home owners from foreclosure, provides meaningful oversight, and makes sure the taxpayers are not ripped off. To the TV audience, these all sound like reasonable things. What they probably don't know is that treasury secretary Henry Paulson is dead set against all of them. If the final bill does not have these things, Obama can then oppose it, citing the bill's defects.

Dan Balz of the Washinton Post has a good analysis piece on McCain's move. Balz says that McCain is an impulsive gambler and sees his campaign stalled, what with Obama rising in the polls, so he goes for a Hail Mary again. This is actually the third such gamble McCain has taken in less than a month. First, he picked an inexperienced governor who runs a state with a quarter the population of Brooklyn as his running mate. Then he cancelled the first day of the Republican National Convention due to a weather emergency. Now he wants to cancel a debate due to a financial emergency. There is an increasing risk that the voters will see him as an impetuous and reckless politician whereas Obama comes off as stable and mature.

If nothing else, McCain's sudden move got his falling polls and the lobbying of his campaign manager off the front pages. Score a win for McCain today. But he's betting the farm that the American people won't see this as a campaign stunt.

The NY Times also has an analytic article on this politics of this. The view there is that Republican members of Congress know very well that throwing $700 billion at Wall St. in a big hurry with no oversight is not popular with the voters. On the other hand, they don't want to buck their own President who still has a modicum of popularity with the the Republican rank and file. They are hoping McCain can bail them out. Democrats don't want to be seen as obstructionists, but they also see the bailout for what it really is: a ploy to spend so much money that a future President Obama's hands would be tied for lack of money. In effect this move is Bush's attempt to "rule from the grave" by severely constraining what the next President can do. Oddly, it might constrain McCain more than Bush since he has spending plans, too. Obama could propose a massive tax increase for the rich claiming Bush's folly forced him to do it. When you read that this "crisis" is about economics, don't believe a word of it. It is 100% politics, pure and simple. Yes, something needs to be done, but if the markets know that Congress is working on it, they will wait a few weeks before dissolving in a puddle.

paleryder

09-27-2008, 05:38 PM

Good for her!

Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio rips Wall Street bailout and wants to prosecute those responsible for meltdown. :1clap2:

youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S27yitK32ds)

Ms. KAPTUR:

Mr. Speaker, here is the latest reality game. Let's play Wall Street Bailout.

Rule one: Rush the decision. Time the game to fall in the week before Congress is set to adjourn and just 6 weeks before an historic election so your opponents will be preoccupied, pressured, distracted, and in a hurry.

Rule two: Disarm the public through fear. Warn that the entire global financial system will collapse and the world will fall into another Great Depression. Control the media enough to ensure that the public will not notice this.

Bailout will indebt them for generations, taking from them trillions of dollars they earned and deserve to keep.

Rule three: Control the playing field and set the rules. Hide from the public and most of the Congress just who is arranging this deal. Communicate with the public through leaks to media insiders. Limit any open congressional hearings. Communicate with Congress via private teleconferencing calls. Heighten political anxiety by contacting each political party separately. Treat Members of Congress condescendingly, telling them that the matter is so complex that they must rely on those few insiders who really do know what's going on.

Rule four: Divert attention and keep people confused. Manage the news cycle so Congress and the public have no time to examine who destroyed the prudent banking system that served America so well for 60 years after the financial meltdown of the 1920s.

Rule five: Always keep in mind the goal is to privatize gains to a few and socialize loss to the many. For 30 years in one financial scandal after another, Wall Street game masters have kept billions of dollars of their gain and shifted their losses to American taxpayers. Once this bailout is in place, the greed game will begin again.

But I have a counter-game. It's called Wall Street Reckoning. Congress shouldn't go home to campaign. It should put America's accounts in order.

To Wall Street insiders, it says ``no'' on behalf of the American people. You have perpetrated the greatest financial crimes ever on this American republic. You think you can get by with it because you are extraordinarily wealthy and the largest contributors to both Presidential and congressional campaigns in both major parties, but you are about to be brought under firm control.

First, America doesn't need to bail you out, it needs to secure the real assets and property, not your paper, that means the homes and properties of hardworking Americans who are about to lose their homes because of your mortgage greed. There should be a new job for regional Federal Reserve Banks. We want no home foreclosed if a serious work-out agreement can be put into place. And if you don't do it, we want a notarized statement by a Federal Reserve official that they tried and failed.

Second, taxpayers should directly gain any equity benefits that may flow from this historic bailout. We want the American people to get first priority in taking ownership of the institutions that want to pass their toxic paper onto the taxpayers.

Third, before any bailouts for Wall Street, America needs major job creation to rebuild our major infrastructure. America needs assets, not paper. We need working assets.

Fourth, the time for real financial regulatory change is now, not next year. A modernized Glass Eagle Act must be put in place. We need to reestablish locally-owned community savings banks across this country and create within the Justice Department a fully funded unit to prosecute every single high-flying thief whose fraud and criminal acts created this debacle and then forced their disgorgement of assets going back 15 years.

Fifth, any refinancing must return a major share of profits to a new Social Security and Medicare lockbox, where the monies can go to pay for a dignified and assured retirement for every American. This Member isn't voting for a penny of it. Those who created and profited from this game of games must be brought to justice. The assets they stole must be returned to the American taxpayers, right down to the tires on their Mercedes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring my bill to create an independent commission to investigate these well-heeled wrongdoers. Real reform now, or nothing.

source (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/24/10135/5657/652/608549)

zeldas

09-27-2008, 11:24 PM

almost 1:30 in the morning EST
and this in from CNN

Congressional lawmakers say a "breakthrough" has been reached on a proposed economic bailout deal.

Mmmmmmmm

kim

09-29-2008, 11:12 AM

note (on the above) - it's "Glass STeagall"...

representative kaptur said it (she DIDN't say "glass eagle") in the video i watched / listened - somebody else must have misunderstood or made a typo or something...

- link below for info on Glass Steagall Act (of 1933)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 11:14 AM

The debate before the vote is on c-span right now ...

There are still a lot of people in Congress that are against it ...

kim

09-29-2008, 11:15 AM

p.s. yeah mmmmm zeldas i wonder what too...

- i've not read anywhere else (just here) yet today...

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 11:46 AM

199 aye

223 nay

12 no votes

Didn't pass!

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 11:48 AM

203 yes

227 no

4 didn't vote

looks like they're going to announce the results now.

even if the last 4 vote yes, it can't pass as it's written now.

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 12:01 PM

I'm not sure what they're waiting for ... time's up on this vote and the bill was defeated, 227-206 ...

dang, they waste a lot of time ...

kim

09-29-2008, 12:03 PM

thanks for that info kazoo... :)

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 12:05 PM

oh I see what they were doing ... they were waiting for people to change their vote

one switched ... now it's 226 against, 207 for ...

now Pelosi is finally talking ...

kim

09-29-2008, 12:08 PM

- rolling my eyes / snore...

:1rotfl2:

krisinluck

09-29-2008, 12:40 PM

Just got here, switched on CSPAN...and the headline at the bottom says "President Bush is 'very disappointed'"

Pass that boy some tissue.

YAY for so many voting against the big financial corporations and at least faking an interest in the idea that most of us Americans can't comprehend the idea that another $700 BILLION be given to those greedy bastards.

krisinluck

09-29-2008, 03:02 PM

lol...a friend just sent me this and I think I like it...I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a 'We Deserve It Dividend'.

To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a 'We Deserve It Dividend'.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.

So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.

That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.

A husband and wife has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?

Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.

Repay college loans - what a great boost to new grads

Put away money for college - it'll be there

Save in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.

Buy a new car - create jobs

Invest in the market - capital drives growth

Pay for your parent's medical insurance - health care improves

Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean - or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we're going to re-distribute wealth let's really do it...instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( 'vote buy' ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG - liquidate it. Sell off its parts.

Let American General go back to being American General. Sell off the real estate.

Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.

Sure it's a crazy idea that can 'never work.'

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion 'We Deserve It 'Dividend' more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC .

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Kindest personal regards,

PS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it's either good for a laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!
Sign me up, dude.

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 03:26 PM

truemajority.org has some great ideas, as well ...

The market took a dive today, but I'm not thoroughly convinced it's as 'real' as it looks.

It's awful to feel this distrustful of everything from the market to the government, but it's pretty much where I'm at right now.

There are plenty of ways to approach this mess without handing Wall Street a blank check.

Here's hoping, after a 24 hour break, that Congress gets together and puts something out there that actually can work for the people who voted them in office, and not for the folks who threaten and bully and manipulate when their plan to cash-in-quick on bad loans, etc. start to blow up in their faces.

zeldas

09-29-2008, 05:50 PM

I think it was a victory for mainstream America. America spoke and our congressmen listened. It was a little painful but they need to come up with something that middle class America can live with. Let the fat cats bail their own ass's out.

Instead of giving money to wall street, why not give 20,000 to each American. I bet that would get the economy moving. New houses, new cars,vacations, yes we will get the economy going again! Yea!:1clap8:

bluekazoo

09-29-2008, 06:00 PM

I read a few parts of that bill online; there were way too many holes in it, including that decisions would be made by 'somebody' as to which CEOs would get their bonuses and golden parachutes and which ones wouldn't ... it just stunk of favors and lining the pockets of the big shots ...

Tonight I'm hearing that there are ways for the SEC, etc. to take action to help this crisis that they haven't even explored yet.

This all ticks me off something fierce ... the more I learn, the dirtier and 'scammier' (is that a word?, probably not) it all looks ...

krisinluck

09-30-2008, 06:21 AM

Kazoo, I'm in and out today, but if you have time to keep this updated with any news I'd sure appreciate it.

zeldas

09-30-2008, 09:00 AM

Oh I love this woman Marcy Kaptur
I wanted to stand up and applaud. She makes me proud that I am a woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S27yitK32ds

LET'S PLAY WALL STREET BAILOUT

Keep people confused Heeeheee!
You go girl!

krisinluck

09-30-2008, 09:10 AM

I beat you to it (http://www.therossshow.com/showthread.php?t=10474), Z! lol...it's in the Political Forum.

The one I found has the clip from Network News where the dude goes batshit live on the air with his "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" rant bookending her five minutes.

Fucking BRILLIANT!

bluekazoo

09-30-2008, 12:03 PM

Here's a link to the roll call, showing who voted aye or nay ...

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll674.xml

RunFaYaLife

10-02-2008, 10:25 AM

I agree with PR on this one.
The first thing the media does it try and install FEAR into all of us.

Anybody remember Black Monday?

http://www.kcbd.com/Global/story.asp?S=9100711

Tuesday, stock prices recovered after Monday's record 777 point drop. But even though the Dow was back up, it is down substantially for the year, and America continues to watch the stock market very closely. NewsChannel 11's Brittany Pieper spoke with some local financial experts to get some perspective on the severity of Monday's market drop.

Watching the Stock Market plunge is scary for a lot of people, but local experts say we've seen things get this bad, maybe even worse, before. "You have a 777 decline in the Dow, so about a 7% drop, which the magnitude of that point wise is very unsettling to folks, and we don't want to negate that, but on October 19th, 1987 we saw a 22% drop in one day which would be like a 2300 drop today in terms of points. That would be serious, but we recovered from that too," said local financial planner, Mark Bass.

That's why Barry Orr, the CEO of First Bank and Trust in Lubbock, says he's concerned, but not panicking, about the current state of the economy. He's seen this before during the savings and loan crisis in 1987. "The bailout in 1987-88 was $500 billion, so really if you put it in perspective today's $700 billion, it's a lot of money, but it's just almost identical to that period of time," said Orr.

Orr's confident that even if there isn't a bailout eventually the market will turn around. But despite confidence in the market system he's still feeling the economic downturn more now than he did in '87. "In 1987 I was oblivious. I was young enough, new family, my biggest concern was you know, making sure my kids are taken care of," said Orr.

The markets may look similar to 1987, but Orr's personal life and personal investments are very different. "I've seen my retirement accounts drop by more than 60%, but fortunately I'm in a situation where I've got several more years to be working, and I'll get to see it cycle back," he said.

It really all depends on where you are in life. Orr says if you have time to wait it out, the market crashes probably won't have much long term effect on you, but people who are at or near retirement age have more room for concern. "Folks that have a relatively longer term outlook, and I don't mean like 20 years outlook. I mean if they've got three and five and ten years out, they'll probably look back on these times and say man, that was a tough stretch in the road, but we survived. The people that need their money now, that's a very key issue, and that's a tough place to be," said Bass.

Both Orr and Bass suggest staying in the market if you can afford to. Unless you really need your money now it isn't a good time to sell because the stock market is at a historically low point, and the experts say it should eventually go back up.

http://www.erisk.com/Learning/CaseStudies/USSavingsLoanCrisis.asp

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/mccain/articles/2007/03/01/20070301mccainbio-chapter7.html

RunFaYaLife

10-02-2008, 10:33 AM

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2008-09-29

Monday, September 29th, 2008
The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning ...a message from Michael Moore

Friends,

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:

"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.

"Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.

"At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.

"Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."

Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.

The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.

And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?

It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened.

This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately:

1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.

2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).

3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.

When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Having read further the details of this bailout bill, you need to know you are being lied to. They talk about how they will prevent golden parachutes. It says NOTHING about what these executives and fat cats will make in SALARY. According to Rep. Brad Sherman of California, these top managers will continue to receive million-dollar-a-month paychecks under this new bill. There is no direct ownership given to the American people for the money being handed over. Foreign banks and investors will be allowed to receive billion-dollar handouts. A large chunk of this $700 billion is going to be given directly to Chinese and Middle Eastern banks. There is NO guarantee of ever seeing that money again.

P.P.S. From talking to people I know in DC, they say the reason so many Dems are behind this is because Wall Street this weekend put a gun to their heads and said either turn over the $700 billion or the first thing we'll start blowing up are the pension funds and 401(k)s of your middle class constituents. The Dems are scared they may make good on their threat. But this is not the time to back down or act like the typical Democrat we have witnessed for the last eight years. The Dems handed a stolen election over to Bush. The Dems gave Bush the votes he needed to invade a sovereign country. Once they took over Congress in 2007, they refused to pull the plug on the war. And now they have been cowered into being accomplices in the crime of the century. You have to call them now and say "NO!" If we let them do this, just imagine how hard it will be to get anything good done when President Obama is in the White House. THESE DEMOCRATS ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS THE BACKBONE WE GIVE THEM. CALL CONGRESS NOW.

Here's How to Fix the Wall Street Mess
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2008-10-01

kim

10-03-2008, 11:20 PM

- those fuckers passed it...

p.s. i think i knew that they would / well hell i lost almost any expectation that politicians would ever do the right thing when i was about 7 years old...

tekobari

10-04-2008, 01:08 PM

Watching Bill Maher last night, the primary interview was with Bob Woodward. Gary Shandling, Christina Amanpour and Alec Baldwin. The consensus of all of them, quoting financial experts, was that when all was said and done, the actual amount would be one- to two-trillion dollars. A staggering amount.

Morever, they've already added 140 billion to the 700 billion they'd already estimated.

One of my banks, the one with most of our money, is already involved in a hostile takeover, with legal fighting and all of that folderol. I have visions of my old age, after all of this squeaking and saving, will end up with constant rice and beans for us and god knows what for the kitties.

Who I really feel sorry for are elders who were set to finally retire after forty or fifty years of a lousy job having lost money in their 401Ks, mutual funds and all of the relatively "safe" investments over the years. Now they'll be handing out baskets at Walmart or working the drive-up window at Taco Bell (which I've seen already).

StrayStar

10-08-2008, 04:58 AM

After bailout, AIG sent executives to the spa (http://http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27075884/)

updated 8:48 p.m. ET, Tues., Oct. 7, 2008
WASHINGTON - Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc., the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.

The tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees at the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy.

The retreat didn't include anyone from the financial products division that nearly drove AIG under, but lawmakers were still enraged over thousands of dollars spent on catered banquets, golf outings and visits to the resort's spa and salon for executives of AIG's main U.S. life insurance subsidiary.

"Average Americans are suffering economically. They're losing their jobs, their homes and their health insurance," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., scolded the company during a lengthy opening statement. "Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation."

The hearing disclosed that AIG executives hid the full range of its risky financial products from auditors as losses mounted, according to documents released Tuesday by a congressional panel examining the chain of events that forced the government to bail out the conglomerate.

The panel sharply criticized AIG's former top executives, who cast blame on each other for the company's financial woes.

"You have cost my constituents and the taxpayers of this country $85 billion and run into the ground one of the most respected insurance companies in the history of our country," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. "You were just gambling billions, possibly trillions of dollars."

AIG, crippled by huge losses linked to mortgage defaults, was forced last month to accept the $85 billion government loan that gives the U.S. the right to an 80 percent stake in the company.

Waxman unveiled documents showing AIG executives hid the full extent of the firm's risky financial products from auditors, both outside and inside the firm, as losses mounted.

krisinluck

10-08-2008, 05:43 AM

I just learned of the AIG thing myself and was coming here to rant. You beat me to it.

That makes me see RED. Greedy motherfuckers. I'm working close to seventy hours a week right now and am going to spend $35 I don't have to get my shoulders unknotted and moved from around my ears on Friday...and they spend that kind of money on fucking spa treatments after begging the government to make US pay to bail their greedy asses out?

It's exactly what I suspected would happen. And I bet AIG won't be the only one of them to get popped doing this.

toke

10-08-2008, 06:04 AM

When my husband told me about this, I said no way. It must be some of that talk radio BS. Who could believe those jerks would be so stupid??? I should definitely have known better.

Anyway, last night in the debate, Obama called for AIG to pay back the money AND fire those horse's asses, immediately.

krisinluck

10-08-2008, 06:58 AM

It's just further manifestation of the Us vs. Them mentality of the very rich in regards to the people who have made them very rich. If heads don't roll over it, things are far more wrong than I could have imagined.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you throw together a plan of this size in record time and get it signed ... all while Mercury is retrograde. This damned this is NOT going to work.

krisinluck

10-08-2008, 07:02 AM

ARGH!!!! Look at the itemized bill from the resort!

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081007102513.pdf

My brain just does not wrap around numbers like that on a fucking HOTEL receipt.

krisinluck

10-08-2008, 07:05 AM

From the same article I got that link from:* AIG tried to hide negative information about its condition from auditors before the bailout plan took shape, according to documents obtained by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

* As early as March, regulators sent a letter to AIG warning the company about its lack of transparency and ability to oversee financial products.

* Just days before Lehman Bros. Holding Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection last month, the company altered its executive pay plan to give senior managers multimillion-dollar bonuses regardless of recent losses.

* Joseph Cassano, the Lehman exec in charge of the company's financial products division, received more than $280 million over the last eight years, according to Waxman. Even after he was shown the door in February, Cassano was placed on a $1 million-a-month consulting retainer.
LA Times - AIG fiddles while Wall Street Burns (http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-fi-lazarus8-2008oct08,0,2801040.column)

zeldas

10-08-2008, 08:00 AM

I got friends that have lost thousands recently on their retirement funds and these bastards are out getting their back rubbed & manicures.
The CEO'S should be called to task for this one. Unbelievable!

paleryder

10-08-2008, 01:35 PM

What a pathetic excuse .....that these retreats were scheduled before the loan.

AIG, Castigated for Resort Event, Plans Another One Next Week

By Erik Holm and Hugh Son

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., castigated by lawmakers for hosting a $440,000 conference days after an $85 billion federal bailout, plans to hold another gathering for brokers next week.

The event, at the Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay, aims to ``motivate and educate'' about 150 independent agents who sell AIG coverage to high-end clients, said spokesman Nicholas Ashooh. ``These sorts of sales meetings are an essential function,'' he said. ``We have them around the world all the time.''

The White House, Congress and Barack Obama have lashed out at AIG for ``wining and dining'' executives at a weeklong conference last month at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino today called ``despicable'' expenses that included $23,000 for spa services, according to Representative Henry Waxman chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

President George W. Bush didn't push for the bailout ``to help top executives go to a spa,'' Perino said today at the daily White House briefing.

AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy, who replaced former CEO Robert Willumstad as a condition of the federal loan, today told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the company intends to reevaluate expenses.

`$400,000 Junket'

``We understand that our company is now facing very different challenges,'' Liddy wrote in a letter to Paulson. ``We owe our employees and the American public new standards and approaches.''

Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, said during last night's debate with Republican candidate John McCain that AIG should repay the U.S. Treasury for the costs of the event.

``AIG, a company that got a bailout, just a week after they got help, went on a $400,000 junket,'' Obama said. ``And I tell you what: the Treasury should demand that money back and those executives should be fired.''

In his letter to Paulson, Liddy said the gathering was planned ``many months'' before the Federal Reserve's loan to AIG. Next week's meeting was also planned before the loan, spokesman Ashooh said.

``This sort of gathering has been standard practice in our industry for many years,'' Liddy wrote. ``Let me assure you that we are reevaluating the costs of all aspects of our operations in light of the new circumstances in which we are all operating.''

About 50 AIG employees will also attend the Half Moon Bay meeting. Ashooh said he didn't know the cost of the event or how long it would last. This meeting has more of an educational component than the St. Regis meeting, he said.

Receipts provided by Waxman for the earlier conference at the St. Regis were dated Sept. 22 through Sept. 30. AIG agreed to the $85 billion loan from the government on Sept. 16, ceding a 79.9 percent ownership interest to the U.S. government.

wtop (http://www.wtop.com/)

paleryder

10-08-2008, 05:14 PM

:sm1115:

AIG hits up Fed for more money
Three weeks after an $85 billion bailout, AIG is turning to the New York Fed for additional funding.
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: October 8, 2008: 6:37 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The New York Federal Reserve is lending up to $37.8 billion to American International Group to give the troubled insurer access to much-needed cash.

In exchange, AIG is giving the New York Fed investment-grade, fixed-income securities that it had previously lent out to other institutions for a fee. Those institutions are now returning these securities and want their money back.

The new program, announced Wednesday, is on top of the $85 billion the federal government agreed to lend to AIG last month to prevent the global company from collapsing. AIG said last Friday it had drawn down $61 billion.

More:

cnn money (http://cnnmoney.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=AIG+hits+up+Fed+for+more+money+-+Oct.+8%2C+2008&expire=-1&urlID=31558175&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2F2008%2F10%2F08%2F news%2Fcompanies%2Faig%2Findex.htm%3Fcnn%3Dyes&partnerID=2200)

krisinluck

10-08-2008, 07:40 PM

Geezus. What a fucking SCAM!

Cancel the damned thing!!!!! Real people have to do that all the time when the car engine blows, or the kid needs doctor care...WE CANCEL OUR VACATIONS because they are no longer in the budget!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ARGH! Fire those dumbasses! And if the Fed gives them more money, fire their asses too.

Sign me
Fed the Hell Up

lakelady

10-08-2008, 07:51 PM

Even if there is a penalty for canceling, it will obviously be less expensive than rewarding these fuckers with a resort vacation. Training, my ass.

Here AIG and the dumbasses who bailed them out - TRAIN THIS :0043:

kim

10-09-2008, 08:37 AM

Info / "Time Banks" / Creating Social Change by Weaving Community:

http://www.timebanks.org/

Find Time Banks - list of community time banks which are online:

http://community.timebanks.org/findtimebanks.php

kim

10-09-2008, 08:40 AM

additional: it seems from the list madison's time bank is the largest in the country so far...

kim

10-09-2008, 09:03 AM

- the revolution is happening now...

paleryder

10-10-2008, 05:48 AM

Seems those retreats aren't all that "essential" if it means dealing with the fallout. Incredible that they actually entertained the idea of wasting even more money in an attempt to justify why these abuses are needed.

AIG Cancels Another Resort Meeting After Criticism (Update1)

By Erik Holm and Hugh Son

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer that vowed to temper spending after hosting a conference at a California resort amid a federal bailout, scrapped a similar event planned for next week at a $400-a-night hotel.

The conference, scheduled to be held at the Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay, was canceled today ``after a re- evaluation of the costs under the new circumstances,'' said spokesman Joe Norton. The White House, Congress and Barack Obama castigated AIG this week for spending $440,000 last month at the St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach.

AIG, which got an $85 billion loan from the U.S. government last month, may access an additional $37.8 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to ``replenish liquidity,'' the Fed said late yesterday. Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday that the company will rethink expenses.

``I cannot fathom how in the same day -- the very same day that AIG asked the government for another $37.8 billion loan, the company would even consider moving forward with plans to host another large conference at another luxury resort,'' said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who criticized AIG earlier this week for the cost of the St. Regis conference.

`Really Bad Idea'

Next week's event at Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco on the Pacific Ocean, aimed to ``motivate and educate'' about 150 independent agents who sell AIG coverage to high-end clients, spokesman Nicholas Ashooh said yesterday. The insurer hosts similar events ``around the world all the time,'' he said, as a way to reward self-employed agents. Norton said today he didn't yet know if AIG would cancel plans for other events.

AIG considered buying advertisements to explain its position, only to be told by its public-relations consultant, George Sard, that it would be ``a really bad idea.''

``To spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks,'' Sard wrote in an e-mail yesterday to Ashooh. Sard, chief executive officer of New York-based Sard Verbinnen & Co., said the message was a private e-mail mistakenly sent to Bloomberg and wasn't intended to be a public statement.

``Whether the company's behavior is wrong on an absolute basis doesn't really matter right now,'' said Heather Elms, a business professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University in Washington. ``It's become a question of perception, and it seems that they're being viewed as behaving unethically.''

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ajC0ofGADFu0&refer=us)

bluekazoo

10-10-2008, 08:23 AM

Holy SHIT!

500 point drop for the Dow in the first five minutes this morning????

That bailout was sure a great idea, wasn't it????? That was one terrific freaking fix they came up with ...

krisinluck

10-10-2008, 09:36 AM

I sure wish I was a bartender. I suspect the bars will be full to the gills again tonight.

paleryder

10-15-2008, 09:18 PM

AIG strikes again......uses same lame reasoning and blows more bailout loot.

AIG executives spent thousands during hunting trip

By IEVA M. AUGSTUMS – 5 hours ago

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A handful of top executives from American International Group Inc. spent thousands of dollars during a recent English hunting trip, even as the New York-based insurer asked for an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve.

The news comes as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday told the insurance giant to do away with golden parachutes for executives, golf outings and parties while taking government money to stay afloat.

Cuomo said he has the power under state business law to review and possibly rescind any inappropriate AIG spending as long as the Federal Reserve is propping up the huge insurer with almost $123 billion in loans announced since Sept. 16.

"This was an annual event for customers of the AIG property casualty insurance companies in the U.K. and Europe, and planned months before the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's loan to AIG," company spokesman Peter Tulupman said Wednesday morning.

In a prepared statement later in the day, the company said, "We will continue to take all measures necessary to ensure that these activities cease immediately. AIG's priority is to continue focusing on actions necessary to repay the Federal Reserve loan and emerge as a vital, ongoing business."

AIG officials declined to say which AIG executives attended the trip, which reports have said racked up an $86,000 tab. News of the hunting trip surfaced just days after AIG received an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve, on top of a previous $85 billion emergency loan granted last month.

The company said last week it would stop "all non-essential conferences, meetings and activities that do not clearly maximize value and service given the current conditions."

Last month, and just days after the U.S. government stepped in to save AIG with a $85 billion taxpayer-funded loan, the company picked up a $440,000 tab for a week-long retreat at a posh California resort for top-performing insurance agents.

Lawmakers investigating AIG's meltdown said they were enraged that executives of AIG's main U.S. life insurance subsidiary spent a lavish amount on the retreat, complete with spa treatments, banquets and golf outings. Last week, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino called the event "despicable."

ap (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3InVeHoYnmXZnM2ACXSgjG0-nIQD93R69002)

kim

10-16-2008, 09:39 PM

whooo hooo hooo who gives a fuck let's party...!!!

- signed the sarcastic slut...

krisinluck

10-16-2008, 09:44 PM

Are you the sarcastic slut in the Southern part of the state? I seem to have the label in my own county these days...is there a club? Will AIG take us on expensive trips at taxpayer expense?

:1chirol_k

kim

10-16-2008, 09:56 PM

lol omgoodness i can hardly believe myself these days i've been acting like...ummmm crazzzzzzy / wild...

- anyway i'm having fun... :D

kim

10-16-2008, 10:01 PM

p.s. hahaha i was a (little bit) worried brian might think i'd gone kinda nuts but he told me today that he loves it...

- said he likes me having fun...

paleryder

10-17-2008, 06:09 PM

AIG needs mo money......

AIG May Tap U.S. Commercial Paper Program for Cash (Update4)

By Hugh Son

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer bailed out by the U.S., may seek a third source of government cash by tapping a Federal Reserve program that buys commercial paper, according to a person familiar with the matter.

AIG probably will borrow less than $10 billion through the new commercial paper program, said the person, who declined to be identified because no agreement had been reached. AIG has already used two-thirds of its $122.8 billion credit line in the past month to cover bad bets made on the U.S. housing market.

A third loan would add to evidence that an emergency $85 billion lifeline from the Fed on Sept. 16 and a $37.8 billion facility last week weren't enough to satisfy the New York-based insurer's need for cash. Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy is trying to sell units including U.S. life insurance, plane leasing and consumer finance to repay the debt.

blomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWxlKOEPOU0M&refer=home)

tekobari

10-18-2008, 10:36 AM

They're really making me sick, and very angry. I'd like to see (a cliche, I know) a bail out of regular folks. I can't take it anymore.

VocalVixen

10-19-2008, 08:54 AM

I'm sick of this crap.

I have to be a good little citizen, work my ass off every day, pay all of my bills and taxes and I NEVER get invited to the party.

Why can't I ditch my job, stop paying my bills and let the big whigs bail my middle-class (if I rate as that anymore) behind out of debt?

This is one of those days I wish Texas would leave and start its own country.

:1tantrum:

paleryder

10-23-2008, 12:48 PM

These guys are starting to make me sick.

:111drummer02:

AIG's Liddy Says $122.8 Billion U.S. Loan `May Not Be Enough'

By Hugh Son

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer bailed out by the U.S., may need to borrow more than the $122.8 billion already offered by the government if capital markets don't improve, said Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy.

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axyw3VPYgKyw&refer=home)

krisinluck

10-23-2008, 08:36 PM

They are cutting their own throats with this shit, and think they are going to get away with it.

People are *pissed*. The government isn't going to smile on them "needing more money", either, given they kinda double dipped the bailout funds...AFTER the big spa retreat bullshit.

No fucking way. I say let them sink. Let them learn to eat beans and rice like the rest of us.

ARGH! I feel a massive rant coming on, so instead of giving into it, I think I'll just go to bed.

paleryder

10-25-2008, 04:37 AM

Ghost Town:

FDIC forced National City (Cleveland) into a merger or they would have been the 17th bank to collapse.

Look at how the bailout is changing.....more want government cash. This is mushrooming into a free for all gift from the taxpayers. Looks like they're priming Congress for another big hit at the rate the list is growing.

Bailout Expands to Insurers
Treasury to Take Stakes in Firms as Distress Spreads Beyond Banks

By David Cho, Binyamin Appelbaum and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 25, 2008

The Treasury Department is dramatically expanding the scope of its bailout of the financial system with a plan to take ownership stakes in the nation's insurance companies, signaling new concerns about a sector of the economy whose troubles until now have been overshadowed by the banking industry, government and industry sources said.

Insurers, including The Hartford, Prudential and MetLife, have pushed the Bush administration to include them in the plan. Many firms have taken losses from mortgage-related securities and other investments and are struggling to replenish their coffers.

Government officials worry that the collapse of a major insurer could further destabilize the financial system because of the crucial role the companies play in backstopping a wide range of financial transactions, although the direct impact on holders of car, life and other insurance policies would be modest, industry officials said.

The new initiative underscores the growing range of problems that Treasury is scrambling to address with the $700 billion allocated by Congress this month. The shape of the plan has changed repeatedly since Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. introduced it last month as an effort to rescue banks by buying their troubled mortgage-related assets. That original mandate has now been pushed aside by a plan to take equity stakes in banks and insurance companies, and other businesses are lobbying to be included.

The government has been forced to expand the plan partly because the federal guarantees previously given some institutions, such as banks, have put other companies and financial sectors at a disadvantage, making them less attractive to uneasy investors.

The government's power to choose winners and losers in the crisis was illustrated yesterday when the Cleveland-based bank National City was forced to sell itself when regulators turned down its request for a Treasury investment after deciding the firm was too weak to save, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, the Treasury gave $7.7 billion to PNC Financial Services Group to help buy National City. It did not require that the money be used for new lending,

Treasury officials yesterday backed away from plans to publicize a new round of investments in about 20 large regional banks over concerns that firms not on the list would be perceived as unhealthy and punished by investors. Capital One of McLean, SunTrust of Atlanta and KeyCorp of Cleveland are among the banks that will receive government funding, according to people familiar with the matter. Other banks are now free to make their own announcements, as PNC did yesterday

The cost of saving the country's largest insurer continues to rise. Senior managers at troubled insurance giant American International Group warned the Federal Reserve yesterday that the company would probably need more taxpayer money than the $123 billion in rescue loans the government has provided, according to two sources familiar with the private talks.

AIG is having a painful time trying to pay off bad bets it made guaranteeing other companies' risky mortgage investments, which have lost much of their value. Five weeks after the government launched an unprecedented bailout to save the private company from bankruptcy, AIG has so far burned through $90.3 billion of government credit.

The troubles at AIG highlight the difficulty of rescuing insurance companies after they begin to unravel. Each week, AIG has faced multimillion-dollar collateral calls to pay off the mortgages and other assets it guaranteed, sources said.

The move to rescue other insurers raises questions about how much the government will need to spend to prop up the insurance sector and which part of the nation's financial system might need help next.

"The big problem is whether the resources they've got available are sufficient as they expand to more and more sectors," said Roberton Williams, a budget expert at the Urban Institute. "Now that they're going to expand to certain insurance institutions, is there enough money to cover that? And what would be the next domino to fall?"

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, approved by Congress and signed into law Oct. 3, permits Paulson to invest in any financial institution, including insurance companies. But when Treasury drafted rules for spending the first $250 billion to recapitalize banks, the program was limited to banks and bank holding companies. In order to buy stock in insurance companies, Treasury officials would have to redraft the rules for the program or create a new one.

Insurers lobbied federal officials for inclusion in the program, arguing in part that it would "level the playing field" between banks and insurance firms. An industry trade group and several insurance companies have met with Treasury officials to discuss participation, industry sources said.

A recent report by Goldman Sachs noted that many insurers are struggling to raise enough capital to keep their credit ratings and meet regulatory requirements. Several major companies report earnings next week, putting their problems on public display.

"These people are not in the same precarious position as AIG, but it would still be prudent for some of them to take on additional capital," Donn Vickrey of Gradient Analytics said. "Given how large the losses are and how long they've been building, they're running out of time."

Treasury officials said yesterday that insurance companies organized as thrift holding companies are already eligible to receive federal money. That list includes most of the largest insurance companies.

Industry sources said that the Treasury has formed a team to examine how it can help insurance companies that have no federal regulator. Many of these companies are subject to oversight by state authorities.

"The life insurance industry is pleased to learn the Treasury Department is considering the inclusion of the life insurance industry in its Capital Purchase Program," said Frank Keating, president and chief executive of the American Council of Life Insurers.

"It's the financial system in general" that's in trouble, said Alex J. Pollock, a former banker and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "Insurance companies are very important suppliers of credit to the rest of the economy and the rest of the financial system."

Yesterday, the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade association for the largest financial firms, sent a letter to the Treasury urging the government to consider investments in a broader range of companies, including broker dealers, automobile companies, and foreign banks and insurance firms.

The PNC deal is the latest mega-merger orchestrated by the government to save a troubled bank. Previous rescues included Washington Mutual and Wachovia. Like Wells Fargo, which bought Wachovia, PNC will benefit from a recent rule change that allows it to use National City's losses to shelter income from taxes.

PNC has been relatively untouched by the mortgage crisis. But the meltdown has caused deep losses for National City. PNC said it expects it could book $19.9 billion in losses, representing 17.5 percent of National City's loan portfolio.

washingtonpost (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/24/AR2008102401715.html?hpid=topnews)

kim

11-02-2008, 11:42 PM

"starting" to make you sick i say (wtf) "starting" to make you sick why i oughtta...the fucking thieves let me at em goddamn fucking bastards do you know how many people in the world are struggling just to get by to pay their rent to pay for grub to barely eat grrrrrrr all sorts of people dying i saw part of a movie the other day and this is what i think to myself every day every day of my life somebody says to one person how're you and they say oh i'm okay i suppose...considering...i mean as okay as can be even tho all sorts of people are starving and dying every single second every singel day every singel minute and they keep on railing on and on and finally the other person (who asked them how they were) say hey are you okay and they come out of their freaking freak out and they say oh yeah i'm okay...

- so yeah that's life folks under the oppression of those who get what they can get at the expense and blood of others (and it sucks like a fucking vampire)...

kim

11-02-2008, 11:43 PM

editing to add: excuse my typos...

krisinluck

11-03-2008, 03:36 AM

This is baaad. Very very bad.

I guess the only banks worth saving are the huge ones; the smaller lenders will be shut out and eaten up by the conglomerates so the fat cats can continue to thrive while the little guys are shut out. It does seem to be the new American way.

krisinluck

11-09-2008, 05:20 AM

The Dems want to use bailout money to help the auto industry? After we've dumped trillions into Wall Street?

Wouldn't it have made more sense to set up the damned plan before passing it and adjusting it to add more and more?

It's early, and I'm short on time, but am I understanding this correctly?

paleryder

11-10-2008, 05:00 AM

Breaking News: AIG again

AIG Gets Expanded Bailout, Posts $24.5 Billion Loss (Update1)

By Hugh Son

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer bailed out by the U.S., got an expanded government rescue package valued at more than $150 billion after posting a fourth straight quarterly loss.

The U.S. will reduce the original $85 billion loan that saved New York-based AIG in September to $60 billion, buy $40 billion of preferred shares, and purchase $52.5 billion of mortgage securities owned or backed by the company, according to the Federal Reserve. The insurer lost a record $24.5 billion, or $9.05 a share in the period ended Sept. 30

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLAOKeHG_AM4&refer=home)

krisinluck

11-10-2008, 05:53 PM

Hell? This is handbasket. I'm on my way.

paleryder

11-11-2008, 01:47 PM

AIG still borrowing and still partying.........

Another AIG Resort "Junket": Top Execs Caught on Tape
KNXV Discovers $343,000 Secret Gathering, AIG Signs and Logos Hidden
By BRIAN ROSS and JOSEPH RHEE

November 10, 2008—

Even as the company was pleading the federal government for another $40 billion dollars in loans, AIG sent top executives to a secret gathering at a luxury resort in Phoenix last week.

Reporters for abc15.com (KNXV) caught the AIG executives on hidden cameras poolside and leaving the spa at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, despite apparent efforts by the company to disguise its involvement.

"AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property," KNXV reported.

A hotel employee told KNXV reporter Josh Bernstein, "We can't even say the word [AIG]."

A company spokesperson, Nick Ashooh, confirmed AIG instructed the hotel to make sure there were no AIG signs or mention of the company by staff.

"We're trying to avoid confrontation, keep our profile low," said Ashooh. "Some of our employees have been harassed."

"What do they have to hide," asked Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who said he had been promised by AIG CEO Edward Liddy that the company would stop such "junkets."

"They came to us and said they were drowning and needed help. A person who is drowning doesn't jump up and start partying," said Congressman Cummings.

Cummings said Liddy should resign as AIG CEO.

The AIG spokesman said Cummings "was mistaken" about the nature of the Phoenix event.

"It's terrible," said former AIG chairman Hank Greenberg. "I don't think the left hand knows what the right hand is doing there."

AIG came under fire last month when Congressional investigators revealed its executives attended a seminar for independent insurance agents at another luxury resort, in Southern California.

The AIG spokesman said the meeting in Phoenix was for independent financial advisors and "was the kind of thing we have to do to run our business."

Company officials confirmed the company spent an estimated $343,000 to sponsor the 2008 Asset Management Conference. A spokesperson said much of the cost would be recouped from product sponsors at the conference.

KNXV said the president of AIG unit Royal Alliance Associates, Art Tambaro, stayed in a two-story Casita suite and worked out at the spa while others participated in seminars.

Tambaro and other AIG executives declined to comment when approached by KNXV.

The AIG spokesman said the Casita suite was provided for free by the hotel because it had booked so many rooms.

AIG confirmed that former football quarterback Terry Bradshaw had been scheduled to appear and sign autographs. The company said it canceled Bradshaw's appearance which was to have been paid for by another company that was a sponsor of the event.

AIG said it conducted a "top to bottom review" of expenses "to validate that only expenses required to ensure the meeting's success are incurred."

The president of the AIG Advisor Group, CEO Larry Roth declined to speak to KNXV.

abcnews (http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=6223972)

mewsicmama

11-11-2008, 01:55 PM

Thanks for picking that up PR. I saw it this morning and damn near went through the roof.

lakelady

11-11-2008, 02:06 PM

I saw this too. All I can say is a big.....WTF???

paleryder

11-12-2008, 02:33 AM

Everybody wants a piece of the bailout pie.

November 12, 2008
Lobbyists Swarm the Treasury for a Helping of the Bailout Pie
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — When the government said it would spend $700 billion to rescue the nation’s financial industry, it seemed to be an ocean of money. But after one of the biggest lobbying free-for-alls in memory, it suddenly looks like a dwindling pool.

Many new supplicants are lining up for an infusion of capital as billions of dollars are channeled to other beneficiaries like the American International Group, and possibly soon American Express.

Of the initial $350 billion that Congress freed up, out of the $700 billion in bailout money contained in the law that passed last month, the Treasury Department has committed all but $60 billion. The shrinking pie — and the growing uncertainty over who qualifies — has thrown Washington’s legal and lobbying establishment into a mad scramble.

The Treasury Department is under siege by an army of hired guns for banks, savings and loan associations and insurers — as well as for improbable candidates like a Hispanic business group representing plumbing and home-heating specialists. That last group wants the Treasury to hire its members as contractors to take care of houses that the government may end up owning through buying distressed mortgages.

The lobbying frenzy worries many traditional bankers — the original targets of the rescue program — who fear that it could blur, or even undermine, the government’s effort to stabilize the financial system after its worst crisis since the 1930s.

Among the most rattled are community bankers.

“By the time they get to the community banks, there may not be enough money left,” said Edward L. Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association. “The marketplace is looking at this so rapidly that those who have the money first may have some advantage.”

On Monday, the Treasury announced it would inject an additional $40 billion into A.I.G., amid signs that the government’s original bailout plan was putting too much strain on the company. American Express won approval Monday to transform itself into a bank holding company, making the giant marketer of credit cards eligible for an infusion.

Then there is the National Marine Manufacturers Association, which is asking whether boat financing companies might be eligible for aid to ensure that dealers have access to credit to stock their showrooms with boats — costs have gone up as the credit markets have calcified. Using much the same rationale, the National Automobile Dealers Association is pleading that car dealers get consideration, too.

The Congressional bailout law gave the Treasury broad authority to decide how to spend the $700 billion. Under the terms of the $250 billion capital purchase program announced last month, cash infusions are available to “qualifying U.S. banks, savings associations, and certain bank and savings and loan holding companies, engaged only in financial activities.”

That definition has grown to include private banks and insurers like Allstate and MetLife, which own savings and loans. It may also encompass industrial lenders like GE Capital and GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, provided they win approval to reclassify themselves as a bank or savings and loan holding company.

The first wave of lobbying came in early October when Mr. Paulson announced the plan to buy troubled mortgage-related assets from banks. The Treasury said it would hire several outside firms to handle the purchases, and would dispense with federal contracting rules.

Law and lobbying firms that specialize in government contracting fired off dispatches to clients and potential clients explaining opportunities in the new program. Capitalizing on the surge of interest, several large firms, including Patton Boggs; Akin Gump; P & L Gates; Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson; and Alston & Bird, have set up financial rescue shops.

Alston & Bird, for example, highlights its two biggest stars — former Senator Bob Dole and former Senator Tom Daschle. Mr. Dole “knows Hank Paulson very well” and has been “very helpful” with the financial rescue groups, said David E. Brown, an Alston & Bird partner involved in its effort.

“And of course, Senator Daschle is national co-chair of the Obama campaign,” Mr. Brown added, noting that because Mr. Daschle is not a registered lobbyist, his involvement is limited to “high level advisory and strategic advice.”

Ambac Financial Group, in the relatively obscure bond insurance business, never needed lobbyists before, said Diana Adams, a managing director. But its clients persuaded the company to hire two Washington veterans — Edward Kutler and John T. O’Rourke — who helped arrange a recent meeting with Phillip L. Swagel, an assistant Treasury secretary. “We haven’t really asked for much in the past,” Ms. Adams said.

Initially, the banks reacted coolly to the prospect of the government taking direct stakes in them. They worried about restrictions on executive pay, and whether there would be a stigma attached. In conference calls with industry groups, Mr. Mason helped explain the Treasury proposal — a job he and his colleagues did well, judging by the change of heart among banks.

“The biggest surprise was how quickly it went from ‘I don’t need this,’ to ‘How do I get in?’ ” said Michele A. Davis, the head of public affairs at the Treasury, who is Mr. Mason’s boss.

nytimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/business/economy/12lobbying.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print)

krisinluck

11-12-2008, 05:17 AM

I say let AIG drown in their own pool of piss, and give their money to the auto industry. If WaMu can be bought up by Chase or Citi (I can't remember which, and I'm not gonna go look), then AIG can be bought up by some other insurance company that isn't flaunting their superiority over the American public footing their bills. Geeeeeezus.

I'd like to see the auto industry get some assistance as well, but NOT with a whole new deal. We can't afford the first one.

I'd also like to see someone beat Paulson to a bloody pulp for pushing this mess through with so little control.

paleryder

11-14-2008, 04:51 AM

Enough is enough. Now Home Depot wants some pie.

Textron, AEP, Honda Ask Fed for Access to Commercial-Paper Fund

By Robert Schmidt and Bryan Keogh
Enlarge Image/Details

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- A group of companies including Textron Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Honda Motor Co. is pressing the Federal Reserve to expand purchases of commercial paper to include them, two people briefed on the matter said.

The coalition, which also counts Dow Chemical Co. and Nissan Motor Co. as members, wants the Fed to go beyond top-rated paper and buy debt with the second-highest grade, the people said on condition of anonymity. American Electric Power Co. Chief Financial Officer Holly Koeppel said the group is seeking to add more companies and preparing a letter to outline its case.

While accepting lower-grade debt could reduce borrowing costs for a broader group of companies, it would also expose the taxpayer to greater risk. The request is one of a number of attempts to get a share of federal rescues, with industries from automakers to heating-oil retailers seeking funds.

``We are really creating a mindset where no one fails,'' said Adolfo Laurenti, a senior economist at Mesirow Financial Inc. in Chicago.

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a6.zX8Uh5DcI&refer=home)

tekobari

11-14-2008, 06:58 AM

Everyone bitches about "socialism" for poor and working class people, especially when it comes to health care. But socialism for the vastly wealthy and powerful is okay.

Why can't capitalism apply to these guys, too? They're the ones who got fat on it.

paleryder

11-14-2008, 02:26 PM

AIG AGAIN.......

Paulson's `Chump' Kashkari May Ruin Christmas, Congressman Says

By John Brinsley and Rebecca Christie

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) -- On Capitol Hill today, Neel Kashkari became the ``chump'' who stole Christmas.

Kashkari, who oversees the Treasury's $700 billion financial rescue plan, came under fire at a congressional hearing today, notably by Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings. Cummings was angry about reports American International Group Inc., which got an expanded $150 billion government bailout this week, is setting aside $503 million in compensation for executives.

``I'm just wondering how you feel about an AIG giving $503 million worth of bonuses on the one hand, and accepting $154 billion from hard-working taxpayers,'' Cummings asked Kashkari. ``What really bothers me is all these other people who are lining up. They say, well, is Kashkari a chump?''

Kashkari, who was selected by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as interim head of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, told the panel that he was ``outraged'' when he first read the reports. Then he learned AIG has set aside the money to eliminate an incentive to leave the insurer, he said.

``I'm not defending it,'' he said.

Cummings went further, saying Kashkari's decisions will determine whether consumers will have a happy holiday.

``Every decision that you make you think about those folks who are losing their jobs and who are in pain and who are not going to have a decent Christmas,'' Cummings said. ``They're going to probably be sitting under the Christmas tree with no presents.''

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aELLkr3l7JYk&refer=home)

bluekazoo

11-15-2008, 08:31 AM

Chris Dodd had a few words about how the bailout is going (and what the total bill to taxpayers REALLY is) HERE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8JE9rUtcFI)

tekobari

11-15-2008, 10:41 AM

Thanks for the Chris Dodd piece, BlueKazoo. If you have a boat, a vacation home and a primary home, and go bankrupt, you can keep the boat and vacation home?? That makes no sense. And why do you lose your primary home? What kind of logic is this?

bluekazoo

11-15-2008, 10:42 AM

paleryder

11-19-2008, 12:11 PM

....Boy.......these beggars are strange birds.

Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds
Auto Industry Close to Bankruptcy But They Get Pricey Perk
By BRIAN ROSS and JOSEPH RHEE

November 19, 2008—

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation's capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough.

All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

"We want to continue the vital role we've played for Americans for the past 100 years, but we can't do it alone," Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee.

While Wagoner testified, his G4 private jet was parked at Dulles airport. It is just one of a fleet of luxury jets owned by GM that continues to ferry executives around the world despite the company's dire financial straits.

"This is a slap in the face of taxpayers," said Tom Schatz, President of Citizens Against Government Waste. "To come to Washington on a corporate jet, and asking for a hand out is outrageous."

Wagoner's private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.

After the hearing, Wagoner declined to answer questions about his travel.

Ford CEO Mulally's corporate jet is a perk included for both he and his wife as part of his employment contract along with a $28 million salary last year. Mulally actually lives in Seattle, not Detroit. The company jet takes him home and back on weekends.

Plants Closed, Company Jets Stay

Mulally made his case Tuesday before the committee saying he's cut expenses, laid-off workers and closed 17 plants.

"We have also reduced our work force by 51,000 employees in the past three years," Mulally said.

Yet Ford continues to operate a fleet of eight private jets for its executives. Just Tuesday, one jet was taking Ford brass to Los Angeles, another on a trip to Nebraska, and of course Mulally needed to fly to Washington to testify. He did not address questions following the hearing.

"Now's not the time to do that sort of thing," said John McElroy of the television program "Autoline Detroit."

"Now's the time to be humble and show that you're sharing equally in the sacrifice," McElroy said.

GM and Ford say that it is a corporate decision to have their CEOs fly on private jets and that is non-negotiable, even as the companies say they are running out of cash.

Private jet travel is perhaps the greatest perk of all for CEOs, who say it allows them to travel more efficiently and safely, even in a recession.

AIG, despite the $150 billion bailout, still operates a fleet of corporate jets. The company says it has put two out of its seven jets up for sale and is reviewing the use of others. Though there are no such plans by GM or Ford.

"It appears that the senior management of the automakers simply don't get it," said Schatz.

abcnews (http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6285739)

paleryder

02-23-2009, 01:52 PM

F***ing INSANE! They'll never repay that back!

:thud::thud::thud::thud:

Bloomberg:

AIG Seeks More Aid, May Lose $60 Billion, CNBC Says (Update1)

By Hugh Son and Vivek Shankar

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer rescued by the government, is in talks with the U.S. for more funding as it prepares to report the biggest corporate loss in American history, CNBC reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.

AIG may report a loss of as much as $60 billion, CNBC’s David Faber said. The company is also exploring bankruptcy, which is an unlikely outcome, Faber said.

A loss may cast doubt on the New York-based insurer’s ability to repay the government, which controls 80 percent of the shares. AIG’s rescue package was expanded to about $150 billion in November as regulators tried to reduce losses at firms that did business with the company. The insurer posted more than $60 billion in writedowns and unrealized losses in two years through Sept. 30, 2008.

more:

[url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoKti29TR4tE&refer=home]bloomberg[url]

krisinluck

02-23-2009, 07:18 PM

No fucking way. Let them fail, or let someone who can properly run a company buy them out. No more saving their asses!

Kandi

02-23-2009, 07:50 PM

After what they did from their initial bailout...yeah, no freaking way. Tough love. You gotta hit rock bottom to learn to change your ways.

kim

02-24-2009, 02:21 AM

and what the fuck are you gonna do about it (this is how they fucking get away with it over and fucking over again cuz people don't do shit about it)...

- FUCK THEM / I REALLY MEAN IT / FUCK THEM / WE DON'T NEED THEM...!!!

p.s. STILL PEOPLE KEEP PAYING FOR THEIR !!!CRAP!!! JUST FUCKING STOP WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU....!!!???

p.p.s. just DO IT / it's fucking EASY...

- BE FUCKING FREE...!!!

kim

02-24-2009, 02:34 AM

- they've got about oh i dunno maybe %75 percent of you convinced that we fcuking need them and you fucking keep pn fucking pay8ing them and yet you keep on fucking complaining too think about it there are only about %25 percent of people carrying on like i am (maybe more maybe less i dunno nobody bothers to keep much track of us) but i'm telling ya godamnit if ya'd just withhold one or fucking two payments to those fucking overlords you'd suddenly see an amazing difference in what's what / they'd all be scrambling like they was dying and the rest of us ud be celebratin....

p.s. straight up / truth i'm telling ya...

paleryder

02-24-2009, 05:04 AM

"ease" = squeeze the public....

AIG Seeks to Ease Its Bailout Terms

The Wall Street Journal

FOXNews.com

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

American International Group Inc. is seeking an overhaul of its $150 billion government bailout package that would substantially reduce the insurer's financial burden, while further exposing U.S. taxpayers to its fortunes, people familiar with the matter say.

Under the plan, the government loan of up to $60 billion at the heart of the bailout would be repaid with a combination of debt, equity, cash and operating businesses, such as stakes in AIG's lucrative Asian life-insurance arms. AIG and the government have been discussing the changes since December and plan to announce them by Monday when the insurer is expected to report fourth-quarter results, the people said.

The earnings report is expected to underscore AIG's worsening condition with its total loss for the quarter likely to top $60 billion, these people said.

source (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/24/aig-seeks-ease-bailout-terms/)

toys-to-treasures

02-26-2009, 08:03 AM

Another 750 billion....

kim

02-26-2009, 11:16 PM

- you naaaz er you piii / errrr just kidding / sorry wrong thread / and as i said / just kidding / i know i know / not something to kid about / howeeeeeverrrrr according to current stats YOU are (waaaaaaaaay) more fringe than i am / nanananana...!

:2poof:

krisinluck

02-27-2009, 04:04 AM

Another 750 billion....At least it's going towards something other than lining the pockets of insurance companies and banks who pissed their money away on private jets, spa retreats for top producers, and severance packages worth more than I'll make in my lifetime.

And that's not even touching the cost of this war in Iraq.

Sorry to hit and run; wasn't planning to post at all since I have about a day and a half of paperwork to get done here. Just had to say something, because it drives me crazy that the bailout of banks and insurers and big corporations was okay but bailing out the PEOPLE isn't so okay. Spending money on education, and infrastructure, and helping people who have lost their jobs. BAH.

LittleRedFireAnt

02-27-2009, 07:21 AM

People are responding in anger all over the world. You have to weed through the brain-numbing mainstream media "everybody keep calm while the ship goes down" stuff.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=auZeM63nrgzo&refer=home

Arsonists Torch Berlin Porsches, BMWs on Economic Woe (Update1)

By Brett Neely

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.

“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”

The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.

A group calling itself BMW -- the initials stand for Movement for Militant Resistance in German -- has claimed responsibility for several attacks in left-wing magazines and Web sites, police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.

One-third of the incidents are classed as “political,” prompting officers to assign a special unit to investigate, Schodrowski said. No arrests have been made. Schodrowski attributed the arson to “a protest against the world economy and rising rents.”

‘Quick to Attack’

German unemployment began to rise last November after almost three years of declines. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Economist Norbert Walter predicts the German economy, Europe’s biggest, may shrink by more than 5 percent this year.

The worst recession since World War II is fueling anger among youths across Europe who “perceive their future as rather precarious,” said Margit Mayer, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University.

“Whether you look at the Berlin events or these anarchist groups in other European cities and countries, they are all making reference to the deepening economic crisis and how the various governments are dealing with them,” said Mayer, a specialist in urban social and protest movements.

Some groups are “very quick to attack whoever they can make out as responsible for having robbed them of decent life prospects,” according to Mayer.

The Berlin car burnings have been concentrated in up-and- coming neighborhoods such as Prenzlauer Berg, where Klostermann’s car was destroyed in May.

‘Don’t Move in Here’

There, new housing and building redevelopments are pushing out the squatter scene that flourished after East and West Berlin were reunited in 1990, said Andrej Holm, a sociologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who has studied the change.

Rents that were about half the city average 10 years ago are now about 40 percent above the average, and the car attacks are an attempt to drive wealthy newcomers away, Holm said.

“It means: ‘rich people, don’t move in here -- your cars will be trashed, we don’t want you here’,” he said.

Representatives from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes, and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG declined to comment on the attacks. Daimler spokeswoman Ute von Fellberg said the matter was about security in Berlin.

Berlin Matter

“This is not a matter for the producer, rather it’s a matter for the city of Berlin,” BMW spokesman Alexander Bilgeri said today in a phone interview.

While Prenzlauer Berg and other central neighborhoods such as Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are thriving, at least in parts, Berlin as a whole remains Germany’s “subsidy capital” almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, said Tobias Just, a real-estate economist with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Unemployment, at 14.1 percent in February, is almost double the national average.

Oliver Kappelle, who moved with his wife and two children to Friedrichshain, is unfazed by the perceived threat.

One night last month, Kappelle came across a “heap of junk that used to be a Porsche the night before,” he said. “I was just relieved that he didn’t park in the empty space behind me.”

Baader-Meinhof

Berlin has a history of political protest, with anarchist demonstrators regularly clashing with police on the streets of Kreuzberg during May 1 marches. Kreuzberg, which abutted the Berlin Wall, is represented in parliament by the Green Party’s Hans-Christian Stroebele, a former lawyer who defended members of the Baader-Meinhof gang in court.

Likewise, arson attacks on cars are not new: a Web site, “Burning Cars,” was set up to track the incidents in May 2007, one month before a summit in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. There have been 290 attacks on cars since then, among them 55 Mercedes and 29 BMWs damaged or destroyed by fire, the site records.

“I wouldn’t advise someone to park their Porsche on the street” in Kreuzberg, Berlin police commissioner Dieter Glietsch told the Taz newspaper in June last year.

As the frequency of attacks increases, Klostermann, a company manager who has lived in Prenzlauer Berg for 12 years, remains unbowed.

“I would never want to be regarded as someone who can be driven out of a place where I enjoy living,” she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brett Neely in Berlin bneely3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 27, 2009 07:37 EST

krisinluck

02-27-2009, 10:46 AM

Taking a quick break, because my eyes are crossed and the fingers of my right hand are cramped from data entry...

Thank you for posting that LRFA. I got home from the two day gig in Duluth to a forwarded email from a woman I've known since I was 18; she was a best friend for years and years. We are still friendly, although she's warm (Texas), I'm buried in piles of fluffy white shit (Wisconsin) and we haven't seen each other face to face since my wedding in 1990.Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives,
socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole
of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce.
I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future
generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.
Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what
is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it
up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass
each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our
two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be
relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide
other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You
are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and
war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can
keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible
for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations,
pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your
beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot
Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and
give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain
the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the
peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under
assault, we'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to
Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the
U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars.
You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing
doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem.
I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World
to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give
trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll
keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other
like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just
hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one
of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,

John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.I've received this several times over the years, and I just delete it because it's such bullshit. Right now, though? While I'm killing myself to survive? It pisses me off.

It adds to the Us vs. Them attitude that got America (and the world!) into the damned mess we are in.

The article you posted, LRFA, is the kind of thing I'm surprised we aren't seeing in America yet. The gap between those who Have and those who Have Not is almost so wide as to not be bridged; of course those who Have want to keep every whit of it while those of us who Have Not drive our $250 cars hundreds of miles a month trying to bring in a fraction of cash to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

So when I hear about giving AIG MORE money, I get pissed. When that is followed by someone thinking that the bailout intended to help the people who are paying for AIG's multiple bailouts is foolish, I see red.

I like T2T. Always have. He knows that. But in this, we have always been opposite sides of the fence. I just wasn't able to keep my mouth shut this morning.

This is going to get worse before it gets better, because there is a shit load of damage to undo. It's not going to undo quick or cheap. But at least an attempt is being made.

Off to take Tylenol and hit it again...

my74

02-27-2009, 02:08 PM

There is a program available online that explains the financial meltdown of 2008. It really is worth time. Here's the link:

Inside the meltdown (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/)

paleryder

03-01-2009, 06:59 PM

AIG goes to the well a 4th time.... :sm1115:

Source: AIG to get up to $30B more in Fed aid
March 1, 2009 - 7:50pm

By IEVA M. AUGSTUMS
AP Business Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Struggling insurer American International Group Inc. will receive up to $30 billion in additional federal assistance in the fourth government rescue of the company, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Sunday.

The new infusion is intended to prop up AIG _ once the world's largest insurer _ as it is expected to announce $60 billion in quarterly losses early Monday, the source said on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are still ongoing.

The company, which is considered too large to fail, previously received about $150 billion in loans from the government, which now has an 80 percent stake in the company.

more:

wtop (http://www.wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1613786)

toys-to-treasures

03-01-2009, 07:06 PM

At least it's going towards something other than lining the pockets of insurance companies and banks who pissed their money away on private jets, spa retreats for top producers, and severance packages worth more than I'll make in my lifetime.

The problem is Kris is that they are proposing another 750 Billion for essentially the same thing as the first bailout. I was not referring to the so called stimulus bill which is mostly as full of shit as the bank bail-outs. Maybe even worse.

The republicans suck, the democrats suck. They all suck. It's time to hold their feet to the fire. Or I suppose we can keep on being in the mode of 1/2 of the people in the country just being relieved that at least it is their guy is president and at least he is not so and so. All the while they are all ransacking the future of this country and perhaps the world.

There is nothing responsbile about an almost 2 trillion dollar deficit. I don't care what the circumstances are. If Bush was pulling some of the shit Obama is a lot of you would be screaming bloody murder. For example just think about how you would have felt about Karl Rove running the census.

I understand that everybody is relieved that Bush isn't the Presidnt but that does not mean that Obama is or has the correct solutions to our problems. That what he is proposing should be beyond critical review. Is the crisis really so dire that everything has to happen now?

And you know I like you too Kris. :)

paleryder

03-15-2009, 06:58 AM

:JapA003: AIG again......

March 15, 2009
A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

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.

The payment of so much money at a company at the heart of the financial collapse that sent the broader economy into a tailspin almost certainly will fuel a popular backlash against the government’s efforts to prop up Wall Street. Past bonuses already have prompted President Obama and Congress to impose tough rules on corporate executive compensation at firms bailed out with taxpayer money.

A.I.G., nearly 80 percent of which is now owned by the government, defended its bonuses, arguing that they were promised last year before the crisis and cannot be legally canceled. In a letter to Mr. Geithner, Edward M. Liddy, the government-appointed chairman of A.I.G., said at least some bonuses were needed to keep the most skilled executives.

“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” he wrote Mr. Geithner on Saturday.

Still, Mr. Liddy seemed stung by his talk with Mr. Geithner, calling their conversation last Wednesday “a difficult one for me” and noting that he receives no bonus himself. “Needless to say, in the current circumstances,” Mr. Liddy wrote, “I do not like these arrangements and find it distasteful and difficult to recommend to you that we must proceed with them.”

An A.I.G. spokeswoman said Saturday that the company had no comment beyond the letter. The bonuses were first reported by The Washington Post.

The senior government official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the administration was outraged. “It is unacceptable for Wall Street firms receiving government assistance to hand out million-dollar bonuses, while hard-working Americans bear the burden of this economic crisis,” the official said.

Of all the financial institutions that have been propped up by taxpayer dollars, none has received more money than A.I.G. and none has infuriated lawmakers more with practices that policy makers have called reckless.

The bonuses will be paid to executives at A.I.G.’s financial products division, the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps that protected investors from defaults on bonds backed in many cases by subprime mortgages.

The bonus plan covers 400 employees, and the bonuses range from as little as $1,000 to as much as $6.5 million. Seven executives at the financial products unit were entitled to receive more than $3 million in bonuses.

more:

nytimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print)

Kandi

03-15-2009, 09:29 AM

You know that just irritates the crap out of me. So these execs couldn't take a pay cut, tighten their belt like many Americans have had to? Take a 10% paycut like my DIL had to? That's just ridiculous. Take a paycut and keep your job and give them walking papers.

paleryder

03-15-2009, 09:45 AM

They wouldn't being getting any bonus if they had been allowed to go under.

Funny how they don't seem to understand that.

paleryder

03-15-2009, 09:57 AM

They wouldn't be getting a paycheck, yet alone a bonus.

The folks who are footing the bill for their AIG paychecks, and their ungodly bonuses are the same people who are losing/lost their jobs, their homes, their retirements because of the mess that AIG help create.

The biggest heist in history continues.....

krisinluck

03-15-2009, 09:58 AM

ARGHHHH!

paleryder

03-15-2009, 10:24 AM

It's all bullshit. I blame the Fed and anyone involved who negotiated the terms of this bailout. They could have easily inserted language to prevent this abuse. They didn't. Ask yourself this......why?

Or why hasn't the public been told where all this money went?

Do you get it now?

A.I.G. = Allowing Irreversible Greed?

March 15, 2009 11:18 AM

"There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous," Larry Summers, chairman of the National Economic Council, told George Stephanopoulos this morning.

Summers was responding to news that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told AIG CEO Edward Liddy that it was unacceptable for the company to dole out $121 million in bonuses for senior executives after the company took more than $170 billion in taxpayer dollars. Geithner suggested to Liddy that $9.6 million in bonuses going to the top 50 executives should be cut in half, with other bonuses tied to performance.

"Secretary Geithner has been in Europe," reported White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee on Fox News Sunday. "He was really upset...by the news. He stepped in and berated them, got them to reduce the bonuses following every legal means he has to do this. I don't know why they would follow a policy that's really not sensible, is obviously going to ignite the ire of millions of people, and we've done exactly what we can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again."

more:

abcnews (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/aig-allowing-ir.html)

krisinluck

03-15-2009, 10:33 AM

The St. Paul Pioneer Press had an article about a month ago about that very thing, PR. If we want a loan from a bank, we have to give up every detail of our lives. They got ridiculous amounts of cash from the bailout, and they are NOT talking.

Yes, it is all BULLSHIT. Fuckers. Makes me see red! :1madrealm

lakelady

03-15-2009, 12:03 PM

How can AIG possibly justify those bonuses????

Oh wait, they don't have to.

WTF? :1madrealm

paleryder

03-16-2009, 11:23 AM

This is nothing more than political posturing. If they were serious they could have drawn the lines in the sand before it ever got to this.

AIG also released where some of the money went ...."in the interest of being more transparent".....:1jester:

March 17, 2009
Obama Orders Treasury Chief to Try to Block A.I.G. Bonuses
By HELENE COOPER

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.”

In strongly-worded remarks delivered in the White House East Room before small business owners, Mr. Obama called A.I.G. “a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.”

“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay,” Mr. Obama said. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”

White House officials said that the administration is not looking to take A.I.G. to court to stop the company from paying out the bonuses. But they said the Treasury Department would be trying to figure out what they can do to block A.I.G. from making the payments within the legal confines of A.I.G.’s contractual obligations to the executives.

“All across the country, there are people who work hard and meet their responsibilities every day, without the benefit of government bailouts or multimillion-dollar bonuses,” said Mr. Obama, who called the issue one of “fundamental values.”

“All they ask is that everyone, from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, play by the same rules,” he said.

The sharp presidential rebuke of A.I.G. is part of the White House effort to distance itself from abuses that could feed potentially disruptive public anger. Mr. Obama’s aides are worried that such anger could make it more difficult to win Congressional approval for the additional bailout packages that Mr. Obama has signaled may be necessary to stabilize the banking system. Already there have been moves in Congress to limit compensation for executives at banks and Wall Street firms that are receiving government help to survive.

A.I.G. executives say that they are contractually obligated to pay the bonuses to their executives, including those who are part of the A.I.G. division where the company’s crisis originated.

nytimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/politics/17obama.html)

krisinluck

03-16-2009, 11:38 AM

Bonuses should be paid based on the quality of work completed. I'd venture to say the quality of the AIG executives was so bad they should be required to pay bonuses to the company for failing so dismally.

Or we could shoot their greedy asses at dawn.

But that's just my opinion.

Kandi

03-16-2009, 12:02 PM

Who's to say they won't take these bonuses and flee the country? I think it's ridiculous to give them more money, especially since they want to pay bonuses that are so inflated, some workers won't see that kind of money in a lifetime, let alone one bonus payout. Arrrrggghhhhh.

tekobari

03-17-2009, 07:10 AM

This probably doesn't belong here, but I have a new problem at work. My job-share partner is very super right-wing, and detests all the "socialists", Obama, liberals, et al.

He's deaf, but a loud-mouth anyway, so I'm not sure how much his deafness (in one ear) has to do with it. But he's YELLS about how Obama is committing genocide on the rich--yes, you heard me. Genocide on the rich!! Could there be a stranger statement? And yells about how Obama is tearing the country down due to his socialist views, and all the typical crazy type of nutty right-wingers (not normal ones). It's every day. He will go up to kids or other teachers and do it, too.

He turns the magazines around that had Clinton's picture on the cover, and now Obama's. Can you be more childish?

He's driving me nuts.

paleryder

03-17-2009, 03:45 PM

:JapA003: Not millions but BILLIONS in bonuses for Merrill Lynch

House wants B. of A. info on $3.62 billion Merrill bonuses: WSJ
By Wallace Witkowski
Last update: 5:13 p.m. EDT March 17, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) --

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is asking Bank of America Corp. and a lawyer for Merrill Lynch for information on $3.62 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill in 2008 even though the investment firm logged billions in losses, The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday on its Web site. The committee is trying to determine whether it was misled about the timing of the bonuses. Last week, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is conducting his own probe, said Merrill misled Congress in a Nov. 24 letter that said a decision on the bonuses had not been made even though a decision to speed up bonus payments had been made two weeks beforehand.

marketwatch (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/House-wants-B-A-info/story.aspx?guid={9CAB205D-7667-497C-9664-D326E77F7A8D})

paleryder

03-17-2009, 08:36 PM

This is pathetic......(especially if the reports The White House and Treasury were aware of this a few weeks ago.

This will teach 'em a lesson....Your next bailout installment will only be 28 Billion 835 million

:1wall:

The biggest heist in history rolls on.....

MarketWatch:

March 17 2009 10:26 P.M. ET

AIG to reimburse taxpayers
U.S. Treasury says it will make AIG pay taxpayers back for the $165 million in bonuses the insurer paid employees and deduct the money from the next $30 billion federal aid installment

krisinluck

03-18-2009, 05:22 AM

*head desk*

paleryder

03-21-2009, 12:27 PM

:JapA003: AIG again......

Seems AIG paid out $53 million more than what they told Congress

Wonder how they will explain this.

In other news, Citi, Bank of America, and J.P.Morgan say they will fight to keep their bonuses. BoA CEO Ken Lewis said the tax on bonuses was "unfair."

AIG Gives Connecticut’s Blumenthal Data on Bonuses (Update2)

By Karen Freifeld

March 21 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., whose compensation policies before and after its U.S. bailout are being investigated, turned over information on its executive bonuses to Connecticut’s attorney general, who said the insurer paid out $218 million.

That amount is more than the $165 million in bonuses previously disclosed by the New York-based company. The insurer provided a list of bonus amounts and contract terms to Blumenthal, who said the information supports his view that the basis for paying the bonuses is “completely unjustified,” according to a statement he issued yesterday.

“These contracts rip the rug from under AIG’s excuses -- revealing no basis under Connecticut law for these mega taxpayer-funded bonuses,” Blumenthal said. “AIG’s own documents reveal that it turned an emergency bailout into a meritless handout, paying windfalls to employees as reward for financial failure.”

Blumenthal said he asked AIG’s lawyers to explain the difference in total bonus amounts.

“We don’t know why the numbers are different,” Blumenthal said today in an interview. “That’s what we are asking the company to explain.”

The documents Connecticut received showed that 418 people received bonuses, from $1,000 to $6.4 million, he said. At least 73 people made $1 million or more, and there were seven people who made $4 million or more, Blumenthal said.

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJmdf4qLd87g&refer=home)

krisinluck

03-21-2009, 01:25 PM

Boo-fuckin'-hoo.

Shame on all of them, sitting in their fancy offices in their thousand dollar suits while their Benz is being washed and the wife is shopping at Saks without checking price tags before picking up the kids at private school.

Kandi

03-21-2009, 02:37 PM

This gets more and more irritating each time they do this. I wish to help Obama would step up to the plate, congress or somebody and make them stop. That company is totally fucking over the American public. It's disgusting.

krisinluck

03-21-2009, 02:43 PM

heh...Jon Stewart was covering this last night. He showed footage of the current CEO of AIG being asked if once this is over, the AIG name would remain the same. His answer was no, too much damage had been done.

I hope to God the American public pays attention to whatever they change it to and do no business with them at all. I'd like to see the lot of them on the unemployment line.

(BTW - Stewart's idea for a less offensive name for the company was Herpes. LMAO!)

toys-to-treasures

03-21-2009, 06:55 PM

Too bad they didn't read the stimulus bill since that had the provision in it that allowed the bonuses to go through. Is there anybody here that doesn't think it is time for the voters to take care of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd? To send them the way of the former majority.

The only thing worse iis the phoney outrageposturing and grand-standing of Congress and the stupid (and probably illegal) 90% tax they passed.

To me this whole episode demonstrates rather clearly that the problem on Wall Street are about 1/2 the companies involved and 1/2 the government.

paleryder

03-21-2009, 08:59 PM

This AIG mess, lets face it, it's just a drop in the bucket of the greatest heist in history. Almost $200 billion so far sunk in this one company and it's nothing.

We're in the stratosphere of TRILLIONS now being needed to undo all the damage done by Wall St if you believe the figures being thrown around by economists.

They're printing money like its toilet paper and that's about what it's going to be worth if they can't get a handle on this soon.

This is a global shakedown.

To me this whole episode demonstrates rather clearly that the problem on Wall Street are about 1/2 the companies involved and 1/2 the government.

Pretty lethal combination if true. One cheat at a poker game can ruin you, if half the table is on on the fix, you're doomed.

War could break out and I don't mean like the fox hunt currently going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean real war.

krisinluck

03-22-2009, 11:33 AM

Like a Revolution!

I've wondered about that, actually. The problem is that Americans in general are too soft and complacent to stand up and dump the fucking tea in the harbor these days. We're all spoiled and keep thinking it can change some other way.

I'm not sure I believe that anymore.

paleryder

03-28-2009, 05:43 AM

:JapA003:

The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Mar 19, 2009 12:49 PM

Advertisement

It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now," he said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too." In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

more:

rollingstone.com (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print)

Kandi

03-28-2009, 08:06 AM

Evidently the public is pissed off just enough for them to be forced to remove their company logo name from the front of their building and hire security.

krisinluck

03-28-2009, 01:22 PM

While I was on Main Street the other day drumming up donations for a friend's benefit next month (see my note in the good things thread for that deal) I stopped at the local insurance agent's office to see if they would donate. (They did - a very nice framed art print for the silent auction.)

As I was leaving, I noticed they had a small sign in the window saying the carry AIG.

I told my guy "I'm not so sure I'd be advertising I was an agent for that crew!"

What a fuckin' mess.

Citnalta

03-28-2009, 05:45 PM

They're printing money like its toilet paper and that's about what it's going to be worth if they can't get a handle on this soon.:icon_slap: Ya just HAD to bring that up...didn't ya?!?

We were ALL suppose to be pre-occupied with outrage over AIG -- while simultaneously enamored with Obama's sweeping coast-to-coast public relations tour. Ecstatic over the chance to witness the very first sitting President to yuck-it-up with Leno. Quickly followed by a stately 60-minutes interview (trying his best to seem as though he wasn't still yuckin-it-up). Finished off with a couple of town-hall appearances -- rubbing elbows amongst an adoring crowd.

Pointless -- except -- to those, who'll never wash their elbows again. I don't know....I really can't recall anything of substance or importance to come out of all that effort (other than an effective orchestration of diversionary tactics) can anyone else?

There certainly wasn't similar consideration given to an effort to publicize the fact they'd started the printing presses to run round-the-clock. Nor the unprecidented amount of ink and paper they'd be running through them.

paleryder

03-28-2009, 08:25 PM

Finished off with a couple of town-hall appearances -- rubbing elbows amongst an adoring crowd.

That Notre Dame bunch won't be so adoring.

paleryder

03-31-2009, 01:02 PM

You are witnessing the biggest heist in history. Actually, you're a part of the biggest heist in history.....the wrong part.

Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges $12.8 Trillion (Update1)

By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.

“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said after the meeting. “If it is enough, that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”

bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=armOzfkwtCA4&refer=home)

paleryder

03-31-2009, 03:32 PM

MARKETWATCH: The United States of recession

ECONOMIC REPORT
All 50 states in recession for first time since 1970s
Coincident indicators show widespread contraction
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last update: 4:50 p.m. EDT March 31, 2009

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The great recession of 2008 and 2009 is likely to be not only the longest downturn since World War II, but also the most geographically widespread recession since at least the 1970s.

For the first time on record, all 50 states were contracting at the same time, according to the state coincident indicators for February released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia on Tuesday. The state-by-state indicators have been tracked by economists at the bank since 1979.

The indicators are designed to closely track gross state product in each state. The GSP data are available only with a long delay, with the most recent data covering 2007.

At least one state had been growing in every month for the past 30 years, until February. In January, the index showed Louisiana was growing and the other 49 states not.

A year ago, the index showed growth in 21 states. The last time all 50 states were growing was December 2006.

Prior to this recession, the most widely dispersed downturn on record was the 1982 recession in which 43 states were simultaneously contracting.

The index is one of the few economic indicators available on a state-by-state basis without a long lag. It's based on four timely employment indicators: nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and real wages and salaries (that is, adjusted for inflation).

marketwatch (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/All-50-states-recession-first/story.aspx?guid={0AD71800-BFB7-468A-859E-81D3A91207D2})