The outrage over AIG bonuses is dying down, but it is only being replaced by a blame game. According to critics, President Obama went too far in his populist pronouncements against banks, and his administration, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is bungling the rescue effort. Banking executives have More…
Patrick O’Connor explains why Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) broke with the rest of the House leadership and voted for the punitive AIG bonus tax.
Cantor is playing the outside game. Since becoming whip in the wake of a second straight anti-GOP wave election in 2008, the Virginian has quickly
When the White House economic team last month rejected a Senate-passed stimulus amendment that would have taxed bailed-out companies at 35 percent for 2008 bonuses, sponsor Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) vowed he’d be back later for another try.
Today, he made good on that promise.
Republicans are coming to the House floor to argue for and against a resolution that’s preceding the surtax on AIG bonuses, with most of the speakers coming out against it. A rationale used by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), and Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) is that the More…
I’ve been meaning to talk about this all week, but that pesky little AIG debacle served as quite a distraction. Anyway, as TWI has reported, there are other scandals concerning bank behavior that also are worth examining. And one of the biggest is the way banks handle their More…
Since the beginning of the financial meltdown last year, Mike Lillis, The Washington Independent’s congressional correspondent, has been documenting the failure of Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations to place tough restrictions on executive compensation as the More…
Let’s say Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and other lawmakers incensed over AIG’s bonuses win their battle. The AIG executives return the money, responding either to public pressure or to legal action. The outrage dies down. Everyone feels justice has been done.
But AIG is More…
In an impromptu press conference today on the White House lawn, President Obama tried to channel anger about AIG multi-million dollar bonuses towards reform of the financial system to make sure this sort of situation doesn’t happen again.
Opening today’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on AIG, Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass) makes a strong case for suing all those executives who got their multi-million dollar bonuses despite their high-risk incompetence that ultimately led the company down the toilet.
Reading from the contracts — which still appear not to More…
In some corners, the anger over the AIG bonuses has turned into mindless populism that serves no purpose. That’s the viewpoint of The Washington Post, which weighs in today with a scolding editorial.
YESTERDAY, we were more skeptical than most about the “populist” backlash against the $165 million in
rss