AIG Update De Jour

Senate Finance Committee hotshots Max Baucus & Chuck Grassley have taken over $6.8 million from the finance/insurance/real estate sector

We looked and we can't find any direct campaign donations from Edward Liddy to Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. Liddy maxed out to McCain and was certainly generous enough to the RNC to get the OK from the Bush Regime to take over from the government financed A.I.G. in June, 2008. But while President Obama was ordering Tim Geithner to block any AIG bonuses, Grassley had a more primal instinct, one, I feel certain, that is more in line with how most Americans are feeling towards Wall Street and the banksters today: death. A conservative Republican, Chuck Grassley isn't advocating the kind of mob violence that a number of DWT hothead readers have been demanding. Instead he demanded that Liddy and his team either resign peacefully or commit seppuku, ritual Japanese suicide. AIG has hired extra security guards to protect its Financial Products Division world headquarters in a tony Connecticut suburb.

Grassley on Iowa radio station WMT: "The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things-- resign, or go commit suicide.” Through a spokesperson, he quickly-- and foolishly-- backed away from his comments.

“[C]learly he was speaking rhetorically-- he meant there’s no culture of shame and acceptance of responsibility for driving a company into the dirt in this country. If you asked him whether he really wants AIG executives to commit suicide, he’d say of course not... Point being, U.S. corporate executives are unapologetic about running their companies adrift, accepting billions of tax dollars to help, and then spending those tax dollars on travel, huge bonuses, etc."

Even one of the Senate's worst Wall Street shills, Chuck Schumer (D-NY- $12,817,946), did some saber-rattling this morning towards AIG, telling them to either give back the bonuses or be prepared to be taxed to the tune of 100% on them. He's such a populist!

Talk is cheap. Even corporate shills like Miss McConnell are castigating AIG now that the public has caught on. When we asked a McCain staffer if the Senator would return the hefty donation Liddy made towards his failed run for the presidency, he said "Fu*k you, asshole." New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, isn't just talking. He's subpoena-ing-- after AIG refused to cooperate voluntarily. Cuomo seems to be working in tandem with the Obama Justice Department on this. This morning's NY Times reports that Cuomo is claiming that 73 AIG employees were paid more than $1 million in the newly minted bonuses.

New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a member of the House Financial Services Committee that will be grilling Liddy this week seems to have come up with an interesting idea-- at least for the AIG bonus crooks who live in America: tax the bonuses at a special rate-- 100%.

“This will allow AIG to continue to meet their ‘contractual obligation’ to pay these bonuses, but will ensure that the recipients are not allowed to keep this money,” Maloney explained in a Dear Colleague letter sent out today asking for co-sponsors... Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) introduced a similar bill late Monday that would create a 60 percent surtax on bonuses over $10,000 to any employee of a company in which the U.S. government has a 79 percent or greater equity stake in the company (AIG is the only firm meeting that test at the moment).

This year's first nonpartisan poll on the issues facing the country shows the Democrats blowing the obstructionists out of the water on the economic debate.

On both energy and health care the Democratic message wins by 53 to 42 percent, a margin nearly twice the Democrats’ 6-point partisan advantage. A majority of voters also side with the Democratic argument on taxes (52 to 43 percent) and the deficit (51 to 45 percent).

...Despite voters’ gloom about the economy, they remain confident in President Obama and support his economic policies. A solid majority of 56 percent approve of the way President Obama is handling the economy, while just 39 percent disapprove. Indeed, by a near two-to-one margin, voters think that Obama’s economic recovery package will help rather than hurt the economy (40 to 21 percent with 34 percent believing it will have little impact on the economy) and a strong majority favor the recovery package passed by Congress and signed into law by the President (55 percent favor to 42 percent oppose).

Former Secretary of Labor Bob Reich was Keith Olbermann's guest on Countdown last night and he was trying to explain why AIG seems so out of control.




UPDATE: REPUBLICANS TRY TO RE-WRITE HISTORY

Although Limbaugh and his junior GOP propagandist Glenn Beck, insist the executives at AIG must get their bonuses, Republican House whip, Eric Cantor (R-VA), has directed two of his most obedient minions, Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Leonard Lance (R-NJ), to introduce a GOP talking points resolution demanding the Treasury Department recoup the bonuses. Didn't Obama already tell them to do that yesterday? Did Cantor miss it because he was busy taking pay-offs from banksters? I mean it might be small potatoes compared to the $32,212,409 the finance/insurance/real estate sector gave John McCain or what they gave other crooked politicians like Joe Lieberman ($9,978,024), Rick Santorum ($5,753,194), Mitch McConnell ($5,001,478), Max Baucus ($4,630,243) and Spencer Baucus ($3,789,474)... but Cantor hauled in $3,119,188, the 4th most loot of any current member of the House of Representatives. And if you would like to know what these generous industries got in return for all the bribes they shoved Cantor's way, look no further than his voting record. Eric Cantor has enthusiastically supported every single bill that has ever come up to tear down the regulatory protections meant to shield society from criminal behavior from the very predators he is now whining about. Of course, Cantor is hardly the only Republican hypocrite screeching about banksters now. McConnell and Shelby-- two Repugs who have scooped up even more loot from the banksters than Cantor-- are agin 'em now-- but when Congress was debating limiting executive pay to bailed out firms, McConnell and Shelby were claiming that would be communism.