Weak Populism

14 Comments

1. 

   SFHawkguy on March 17, 2009 at 5:10 am

   Yeah, hard to feel sorry for that guy with the pretty pin stripe suit that is having a hard time selling his real estate (wtf? not home? real estate?).

   Until they move to tent city I’m not gonna shed a tear: http://thedoomsdayreport.blogspot.com/2009/03/fastest-growing-city-in-america.html

2. 

   michaelmt on March 17, 2009 at 6:49 am

   I have a highly qualified son looking for work in the financial industry–and it’s simply not there! The idea that the highly paid employees of AIG will walk to other jobs if they don’t get millions in bonuses is so stupid I can’t tolerate listening to it. There aren’t other companies willing to pay the stupid rates that AIG was paying for failure.

3. 

   Steven D on March 17, 2009 at 7:18 am

   What were you doing up at 2 in the morning Boo?  Get some sleep!

   • 

     Steven D on March 17, 2009 at 7:22 am

     I love this quote:

     “Some Goldman employees got rich before the markets collapsed, allowing them to invest several million dollars in the funds, often on a leveraged basis.”

     If I’m not mistaken, that was one of the problems with the 1929 crash — everyone was buying on margin (i.e., borrowing money to invest in stocks which made the decline worse because of all the margin calls — i.e., repay your loan, dammit — that happens when you have to suddenly sell your shares).  So much for lessons learned on Wall Street.

     • 

       idredit on March 17, 2009 at 9:37 am

       Yeah, GoldmanSachs, the heavily funded golden ones (who never seem to lose no matter the market conditions..Hmmm) are now eyeing distressed debt market.

       and that other one, AIG — acronym for the agency of Avarice.Imprudence.Greed — is depleting Obama’s capital

       BTW, Goldman was the only private party sitting in on Treasury/Fed discussions to bailout AIG.

       We should not close Gitmo:

       I’d use a fraction of that money to buy lead –shackle the whole bunch of thugs for their swim to Gitmo. Bless the lucky ones who overcome the sharks to make it there.

4. 

   on March 17, 2009 at 7:25 am

   to restore the 50% tax rate for anyone getting a bonus when their company lost money overall, or who lives and works in NY City and makes 250K plus.

   • 

     clif on March 17, 2009 at 7:44 am

     Why just 50%, I prefer 99.9999999%, let them keep the last penny to remember their crime from.

     Why are we paying bonus’s to people who are either totally incompetent, in that they created an instrument they didn’t really understand, which is why it got out of control and collapsed the whole house of cards. Well, then tell the bastards just how incompetent they are and say.” if you think you can get anybody to hire you go for it, but if you can’t be glad you still are employed.”

     OR, they KNEW and are just greedy criminals scamming the rest of us for short term profits and shouldn’t be getting bonus’s but indictments.

     • 

       Dongi 2 on March 17, 2009 at 11:23 am

       We are paying bonuses to incompetent people because the Empire, in its declining days, has become incompetent.  Get used to it, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  After all the Bush clown got away with stealing two elections to the highest office in  the land.  And, his successor, seems poised to repeat LBJ’s mistake of getting stuck in the quicksand of unwinnable foreign wars.  But, where Johnson had to worry about North and South Vietnam, Obama must deal with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.  

       Not to worry, though, AIPAC is on our side.

5. 

   mainsailset on March 17, 2009 at 9:20 am

   My curiosity runneth over wondering how the list of bonusees will match up with the UBS list of 52,000 US patriots that hid their monies from the US tax collectors. Please let the FBI get the list and then share it, please

6. 

   on March 17, 2009 at 9:53 am

   You looking for less sympathetic. The Republicans in Sacramento just voted down extending unemployment under the stimulus program. They just voted away three billion dollars.

   And then there’s a Republican in Florida who wants to give drugs tests to the unemployed. Jeez. Why not give drug tests in the emergency room as a basis for treatment.

   There are plenty of douchebags out there whose ideology is butting against reality and a lot of people are suffering.

7. 

   Brendan Skwire on March 17, 2009 at 10:33 am

   speaking of weak populism, why is the adminsitration saying it’s “powerless” to do anything about those bonuses because of contractual obligations?  Isn’t that very different from the way contracts were approached during the GM bailout?  

   even NPR was asking questions about that discrepancy last night.  Greenwald says it’s a bullshit argument too, and brad sherman says (via tpm)

   the Treasury Department wouldn’t have to be withholding $30 billion in aid from AIG until the company restructures its bonus payments, because Congress already had given Treasury the authority to prevent those bonuses from being paid.

   When you write “We’re a country that should be throwing people in prison left and right and confiscating ill-earned gains. But we can’t face up to the thievery and corruption”, i’m wondering who you mean by “we”?  

   I don’t think any of your readers are members of cognress, the administration, or the treasury. There’s no one I know personally, from conservatives to the leftiest of lefties, who “can’t face up to the thievery and corruption.” everyone i know wants blood.

   My representatives may think it’s enough to throw money at the scoundrels, but THEY are certainly not WE. that’s why THEY are referred to as “the Village” and I’m sure you don’t count yourself among them.

   • 

     idredit on March 17, 2009 at 11:29 am

     Back in September, they knew and they lied.

     Financial Times  

     AIG, Goldman and the NYT

     Does anyone care to remember this story on AIG, from the New York Times, back in September? More to the point, does anyone remember the trouble it caused?

     It was one of a series of articles that appeared in the mainstream press contemporaneous to AIG’s bailout that dissected just what the insurer had been doing that made it so risky, and so systemically important.

     We cite the NYT article in particular though, for this paragraph:

     Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.

     … which caused something of a furore.

     Goldman strenuously and very publicly denied the gist of the allegation. So aggressive was their rebuttal, in fact, that the wires even wrote up seperate stories on it.

     [.]
     Now, of course, we have AIG’s counterparty list. And guess who tops it?

     Goldman Sachs.

     Goldman is the proud recipient of $12.9bn in payments from AIG and AIGFP. (Specifically, $2.5bn from CDS collateral postings, $5.6bn from Maiden Lane III payments for CDS positions, and $4.8bn in payments related to securities lending. The Maiden Lane III portfolio was, of course, created in December specifically help reduce the burden of CDS collateral postings facing AIGFP proper – it bought the underlying CDO tranches from the CDS counterparties)

     For the record then, it certainly was not the NYT that was “seriously misleading”.

     We wonder whether things might yet get uncomfortable for Goldman. After all, they’re in rather an awkward position: on the one hand, according to their above PR line, they didn’t need AIG’s money at all (it was, to paraphrase, immaterial whether AIG went under or not). And yet, on the other hand Goldman is – gosh – the largest recipient, via AIG, of taxpayers’ money.

     [.]

     • 

       americanforliberty on March 17, 2009 at 4:17 pm

       it’s all about greed, nothing more

       http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/aig_cuomo

8. 

   americanforliberty on March 17, 2009 at 10:39 am

   The cure to the AIG bonus problem is very simple. And can be solved in the following manner:

   1)Open an AIG office in Topeka, Kansas. Because Kansas is a hire at will state.

   2) Any AIG employee who is willing takes a bonus gets an intra-company transfer to Topeka, KS.

   3)upon their arrival in Topeka, KS their immediately fired. Because in Kansas is a hire at will state.

   Bottom line refuse your bonus or get fired.