aig

What seemed like a clear path ahead was upstaged by the health care battle.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll results are in for Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) re-election bid — and they’re being cast as a win for the senator, even though he still trails a possible Republican challenger. The survey found that nearly half of Connecticut voters don’t trust Dodd and one in four Democrats say they’d support [...]

Anyone who watched AIG bonus-gate with any interest is aware that it was Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) who took the fall for changing legislation that would have reined in those controversial payments. Anyone following a bit more closely, though, knows also that Dodd made those changes only after White House officials, behind Treasury Secretary Tim [...]

Just how much did top AIG executives pocket last year in bonuses? Politico reports the total awards paid out were four times higher than previously reported, based on new responses from AIG to queries by Rep. Elijah Commings (D-Md.).
AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work [...]

Long before the AIG bonus scandal erupted this month, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) was at the forefront of (failed) congressional efforts to install stricter pay limits for employees of bailed out banks. Sherman was an early critic of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, arguing last fall that it didn’t go nearly far enough to prevent [...]

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he opposed the 90 percent tax on AIG bonuses that passed the House. “I don’t support bills of attainder,” he said, to loud applause. He said he opposed the idea of controlling the salaries and bonuses of TARP-taking executives, focusing instead on creating a subcommittee [...]

Reading the resignation letter from the former AIG executive who had nothing to do with credit default swaps but has been vilified regardless, you see the other side of the story, a way to feel some sympathy for top financial executives caught in the same crisis that’s dragging all of us down.
But then you find [...]

This resignation letter in The New York Times today from an AIG executive in the financial products unit explaining the bonus controversy from his point of view probably will be flying around the blogosphere today. In the letter to AIG CEO Edward Liddy, the executive, Jake DeSantis, says  it’s not public shame that prompted his [...]

Tonight, President Obama is reiterating his plan for getting the country’s economy back on track, the emphasis again on investments in health care, energy, education and infrastructure — the tangible, bricks- and-mortar types of things that are decidedly not reliant on housing bubbles and credit default swaps.

Housing advocates are reminding us that the foreclosure crisis at the root of the economic collapse is also a long ways from ending. And the numbers are startling.
Without government help, 2.4 million homeowners will lose their homes to foreclosure this year, according to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), an advocacy group.
Every 13 seconds another [...]