rssCondemnation of AIG Coming From All Sides
Monday, March 16, 2009 at 4:46 pm
- 8 Comments
Congressional leaders from all walks are joining President Obama in berating AIG for doling out millions in bonuses after accepting $170 billion in federal help.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the chamber floor today to decry the news as a “breach of public trust,” while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the episode “appalling.”
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), who heads the Senate Banking Committee, joined the chorus this afternoon, citing “another outrageous example of executives … enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers.” Across the aisle from Dodd, Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the senior Republican on the banking panel, told ABC’s Good Morning America Monday that many AIG executives “should be fired, not awarded bonuses.”
And the list goes on.
Still, it remains to be seen what legal recourse policymakers have to recover that money. Even if all $170 billion of AIG’s federal help had come from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (which it didn’t), that law was written with almost no conditions on how the money is spent.
Obama and Dodd, of all people, should remember that little detail. After all, they both rejected House-passed legislation that would have set stricter guidelines on TARP spending — a bill that, among other things, would have reined in executive compensation.
In the wake of the AIG outcry, will the Senate reconsider the merits of the House bill? Don’t count on it. As the stalled housing package is proving, the finance industry may be flailing for its life, but it still, in many ways, appears to control the strings of Congress.
8 Comments
Comment posted March 16, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
Why is Obama whining about AIG? The government gets back 40% of the AIG bonuses and if anyone cared about tax money they would of tried to save a little of it last week! If anyone deserves a bonus now it is AIG, they have to deal with a loud mouth double dipping “partner” that hasn't showed up for a day of work and can't even balance his own check book!
Comment posted March 16, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
The Fed now owns perf. stock in AIG and they are crushing the stock price, stupid government!
Pingback posted March 17, 2009 @ 7:37 pm
[...] Being a giant company deeply enmeshed in the financial system, AIG has been receiving money from the US government in order to prop it up. The merits of those actions are debatable, but I’ll leave it aside today. What has hit the news is fact that AIG, after receiving about $180 billion in taxpayer funds to prevent implosion, is now paying bonuses of $165 million to its executives. Obama is incensed, and he’s not the only one. [...]
Comment posted March 19, 2009 @ 6:37 am
You are right, it's a big mess.
If you thought it couldn't get any worse than Bush. The dems are spending more and making mistakes of the grossest incompetence. Here is the latest
(quite shocking) of their trillion dollar blunders:
http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-sti…>
By the way the bonuses are not new. Obama is only getting mad because now the public knows. It was widely reported in January. Do a google search for 'AIG Said to Offer $1 Billion in Retention to Workers' and you will see time stamps from January.
Comment posted March 19, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
You are right, it's a big mess.
If you thought it couldn't get any worse than Bush. The dems are spending more and making mistakes of the grossest incompetence. Here is the latest
(quite shocking) of their trillion dollar blunders:
http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-sti…>
By the way the bonuses are not new. Obama is only getting mad because now the public knows. It was widely reported in January. Do a google search for 'AIG Said to Offer $1 Billion in Retention to Workers' and you will see time stamps from January.
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