No Bailouts For Billionaires -- And No Bail For These Bums Either

Let's make a deal before the markets open in Asia

My financial advisor is pretty conservative with her suggestions. I just got off the phone with her and she was talking about getting in on a deal with another guy named Paulson (not related) and some "vulture capitalists" who are buying up bad mortgages for thirty cents on the dollar. She talked for 30 minutes but I was dumbfounded and couldn't help picturing Mitt Romney and wondering when Americans are going to get pissed off enough at predtors and vultures to start shooting them-- instead of electing their servants to government office.

Wall Street's five biggest firms paid more than $3 billion in the last five years to their top executives, while they presided over the packaging and sale of loans that helped bring down the investment-banking system.

Merrill Lynch & Co. paid its chief executives the most, with Stanley O'Neal taking in $172 million from 2003 to 2007 and John Thain getting $86 million, including a signing bonus, after beginning work in December. The company agreed to be acquired by Bank of America Corp. for about $50 billion on Sept. 15. Bear Stearns Cos.'s James "Jimmy" Cayne made $161 million before the company collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in June.

...The $3.1 billion paid to the top five executives at the firms between 2003 and 2007 was about three times what JPMorgan spent to buy Bear Stearns. Goldman Sachs had the highest total, with $859 million, followed by Bear Stearns at $609 million. CEO pay at the five firms increased each year, doubling to $253 million in 2007, according to data compiled from company filings.

This morning's NY Times is reporting that Congress is close-- despite McCain's craven opportunism-- to a consensus on a bailout plan. It will, no doubt include some fine window dressing, like the Blue Dog's demands, presented by Pelosi and Hoyer, that Wall Street repay the government if taxpayers lose money through the program, as well as a fig leaf restraining-- slightly-- obscene executive pay and golden parachutes, as well as a provision for congressional oversight once the money starts being doled out. Whoopie? I don't think so.

I wonder where Pelosi and Hoyer and their Blue Dogs were when this got decided on:

AIG also said in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission that it is paying about 130 executives cash awards as part of a retention program for the giant insurer, which got the right to borrow up to $85 billion from the government last week in a deal to avert possible bankruptcy. AIG said in the filing that one executive, Jay Wintrob, AIG's executive vice president of retirement services, would receive an award of $3 million. The awards are payable 60% in December, and 40% next December.

The retention program suggests that AIG's current management, including CEO Edward Liddy who was appointed in connection with the government deal, is trying to hold on to top employees and protect the value of the company's insurance subsidiaries. Mr. Liddy is exploring selling off various units to repay the loan, but he also has said he wants to retain as much of its main insurance operations as possible in the company that remains. Holding on to executives could help in both efforts.

Nevertheless, according to the Times "lawmakers said they hoped to reach an agreement by Sunday night, in time for the opening of the markets in Asia." I would think David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse have been playing the role of "reporters" or "journalists"-- or whatever they style themselves-- to understand what a special interest group is and figure out the vultures and predators and their bribed elected servants and special interests and that labor unions and advocates of affordable housing are American heroes whose feet scumbags like David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse should be forced to clean with their tongues each evening when they come home from work. In an effort at the pseudo-balance that has defined mass media's role and culpability in the economic meltdown-- not to mention Iraq and the theft of the 2000 election-- David Herszenhorn and Carl Hulse blabbled on (with McCain pounding his chest like a monkey and Gingrich tossing stink bombs from the sidelines):

Still, the partisan brinkmanship continued with all of the acrimony that usually accompanies the final throes of a major legislative bargaining session. Republicans accused Democrats of trying to add benefits for special interest groups, including labor unions and advocates of affordable housing, while Democrats accused Republicans of trying to undermine the efforts to limit executive pay at firms that seek government help and trying to change accounting rules to benefit big business.

The two sides were also fighting over a proposed fee on financial firms to offset some of the cost of the rescue effort.

...Officials said there were still more than a dozen points of disagreement, though the centerpiece of the rescue effort remained intact: a plan for the government to purchase up to $700 billion in troubled assets from financial firms as a way to free their balance sheets of bad debts and to help restore a healthy flow of credit through the economy. It could become the largest government bailout in the nation’s history.

...But with conservative Republicans denouncing the plan as an affront to free market capitalism and some liberal Democrats criticizing it as a giveaway to Wall Street, both parties were anxiously starting to court votes, particularly in the House, where angry Republicans nearly scotched a deal that had been in the works for days.

Republicans, under pressure from Democrats to deliver 70 to 100 votes from their side, were scouring the ranks and focusing on the two dozen Republicans who were retiring this year.

“It is a good number,” said Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois, one of the Republicans leaving Congress this year. Mr. LaHood said he had suggested to the leadership that they convene the departing members to get them to make the case to wavering Republicans.

Both parties were also scouring the political map to identify lawmakers who face little or no opposition for re-election in November, knowing they would be more willing to vote yes.

Democratic officials said that despite having control of both chambers in Congress, they were far from having a majority sufficient to pass the measure just from their ranks. And they also warned that Democrats in potentially tough races could not be counted on to provide the votes to put the package over the top when, and if, it reaches the floor.

Republicans countered that if Democrats were truly in need of generating more support, they would have to jettison some provisions in the bill that were most objectionable to their members, particularly a provision that would direct 20 percent of any profits from the rescue plan to help create affordable housing. The Republicans want all profits returned to the Treasury.

Don't vomit on your Times-- or your computer. Instead watch John Amato's interview with Naomi Klein, who seems to have a far better understanding of the scope and depth of this situation than our own political leaders. I sure hope Obama and Reid and Pelosi have people around them who are sharp enough to be paying attention to Klein:

They all knew it and they were making money as fast as they could based on their belief that they would get bailed out. Because it is entirely consistent with the Bush administration over the past 7 years. One of the other big lies floating around is this is somehow a departure from the way the Bush administration usually does business. It’s not a departure; it’s just a change in the direction of the flow. This is what they have been doing for 7 years: transferring public money, public wealth, into the hands of private crony contractors. And now as their final act they are taking the bad debts of the corporate sector and transferring them to the taxpayer. There is no aberration here; there is no big surprise. This is entirely consistent with everything they’ve done.

...What Bush was saying when he went on television last night was that we have to bail out the people at the very top because it’s going to trickle down back to you. There are many more ways of helping Americans who are in foreclosure on their homes and even helping companies that are not able to access credit. You can actually do it directly, you can do it from the bottom up instead of saving the people at the top and hoping it trickles down. And I think that the anger of Americans directed at Wall Street in this bailout is a very fair comeuppance for Wall Street because there has been a total severing between what is good for Wall Street and what is good for Americans. In the ’90s this was the line “What’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.” Americans do not believe that; they know it’s not true. It’s been Wall Street’s predatory practices - not just subprime - bedding up companies that laid off workers, rewarding companies for moving jobs overseas, just acting in predatory ways in myriad ways and exacerbating the climate crisis and acting in completely irresponsible ways. They have severed themselves from regular people and now when they’re going down regular people don’t believe that things are bad for them too. And that was Bush’s job was - to try to scare people to say what’s bad them is bad for you. But after so many years of what’s good for the elite not being good for regular people, it’s a much harder sell.

...I think that it’s important to stress that this is money that could be used for actively preventing foreclosures. They could be using this money - a fraction of it - to keep people in their homes. They could be stimulating and rebuilding the fundamentals of the economy by investing in infrastructure, public works projects, a green-style New Deal - all of the investments that are so desperately needed. New technology, investing in the real economy and getting away from this casino economy. And because they want to throw all this money at Wall Street, that is money that will not be available for those real investments.