The Execs Are Starting to Bail

I said back when Obama decided to control the pay of executives that the talent that's running those now government owned companies would start bailing out as soon as they could. It's starting:

American International Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Robert Benmosche told the company’s board that he is considering resigning from the job he’s held for three months, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Benmosche told directors at a meeting last week that he was “done,” though he agreed to think it over after board members reacted with shock, the Journal reported.

The CEO is chafing under constraints imposed by AIG’s government overseers, in particular a recent compensation review by Kenneth Feinberg, the special master on pay in U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, according to the people.

Benmosche, who started in August after his predecessor Edward Liddy quit in May, is seeking to halt the departure of customers and employees so he can build up units to sell in order to repay loans included in AIG’s $182.3 billion bailout. New York-based AIG is among firms Feinberg ordered to slash pay.

“If it’s true, it’s not a pretty story,” said Mitsushige Akino, who oversees about $645 million as chief investment officer at Tokyo-based Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co. “Either he’s leaving because the first round of problems have been settled to some extent, or there are too many problems to be dealt with. The U.S. government is still taking a very conservative stance on tackling the financial system problems.”

Last week, Benmosche and other AIG board members met with Feinberg in New York, the Journal said. During the three-hour meeting, board members discussed difficulties of complying with pay policies and retaining talent, the report said.

There's going to be a lot more of this and replacing these guys with comparable talent will be very difficult.

Homebuying Like It's 1989

For some parts of Southern California housing prices have returned to what they were during the Reagan Administration:

In parts of Southern California, the housing crash has upended a basic tenet of the American dream: that home values always increase over the long term.

Properties in several areas are selling for less than they did 20 years ago, and that's not even counting the effects of inflation.

The reversal is a bonanza for some first-time buyers. They're nabbing houses for less than what their parents paid in the late 1980s, jumping into a real estate market that has become a kind of economic time machine.

To return to the past, take a stroll down Mulberry Avenue in Lancaster. John A. Beatrice, 55, bought his spacious two-story Spanish-style house there brand-new for $120,000 in 1989. It was a price he could comfortably afford, and he planned on staying through retirement, so he wasn't worried about price swings.

"I always knew real estate goes like this," said the aerospace engineer, moving his hand in an undulating motion like bell curves on a graph.

But he never imagined his neighborhood would drop off the charts. In April, a slightly larger home two doors away sold for $66,500. That's just over half the $130,000 it went for new in 1992. In 2005, that house sold for $330,000.

Beatrice's 29-year-old daughter is now shopping for Lancaster houses priced lower than when she was a kid.

Home prices across most of Southern California have not fallen nearly as far. The median price in the six-county area was $247,000 in April, about what it was in 2002.

But in 14 Southland ZIP Codes, mainly desert communities in the Antelope Valley and Inland Empire, median prices have fallen below levels recorded in April 1989, according to MDA DataQuick, a San Diego real estate information service.

That means thousands of homes in those neighborhoods -- even houses barely 20 years old and in decent shape -- have lost every dime of their appreciation, giving back not just the gains of the recent bubble but steady increases logged over a generation.

For those unfamiliar with Southern California, the areas described are locations that rapidly expanded as prices climbed in the main suburban areas of Orange and Los Angeles Counties. People seeking affordable housing headed farther and farther out of town to find homes they could afford, even if it meant long commutes and weather that ranged from frigid to firestorm.

Now that there's a lot of housing inventory available in the more desirable parts of Southern California, the outlying suburbs are dying. Why live out there if you don't have too?

And in other Southland real estate news, the 5-star St. Regis Resort is up for a foreclosure sale. That's where AIG held their ill-fated retreat after getting a big government bailout.

Comparing the Media Coverage

A few weeks ago about 40 malcontents from an ACORN splinter group went to the homes of various AIG executives to carry out their little temper tantrums. They were accompanied by a coterie of more than twice as many members of the media, including all the major broadcast and cable news networks plus newspapers a'plenty.

Forty protesters, nationwide front page coverage.

Yesterday more than 200,000 Americans, mostly middle class and probably most of whom had never before participated in any form of protest or political rally, gathered at some 800 sites around the country to express their displeasure with the direction of our government. The media did their best to ignore it...as expected (from Doug Ross):

Nearly 200,000 Americans showed up to protest high taxes in hundreds of cities around the country today.

The New York Times and The Boston Globe ignored "Tea Parties" altogether. ABC and CBS reporters were nowhere to be found. NBC, on the other hand, simply made obscene references -- using a tea-related colloquialism -- to express its corporate disgust with America's founding principles.

And a CNN journalist, rather than reporting on one event, decided to debate the crowd!

I gave the Mission Viejo Tea Party more coverage than most of the national media gave the entire nationwide event.

Doug goes on to compare yesterday's media coverage to the coverage given to Cindy Sheehan and her ditch people in Crawford, TX. Read the whole thing.

Barney Frank Wants to Regulate Your Salary Too

In the age of Obama government power knows no bounds:

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

No company in need of a bailout is going to want one by the time all the new restrictions are enacted. It would be cheaper to just go broke.

Deadliest Bonus

That title is what you get when you combine one of my favorite reality shows, Deadliest Catch, with the AIG bonus mob scene. How do you combine such a thing? You get Mike Rowe, who narrates and hosts the series, to weigh in on the bonus kerfuffle (via The Anchoress):

... a better term than "bonus" should be used to refer to these payouts. For many, a "bonus" is not an unexpected surprise. It is the motivating factor, and the only reason the working relationship exists at all. It is in other words, it' the very essence of the deal.

Because these "bonuses" are not guaranteed, they are a reflection of an individual's willingness to assume a certain level of risk that most salaried workers would go out of their way to avoid. Likewise, "bonuses" are the only way for highly competitive corporations to attract and compensate "top talent." Arguing over whether the money in question is gross or exorbitant is beside the point and after the fact, in my opinion. So too, is the exact manner in which it's earned. That's between the employer and the employee, and governed by the terms of the deal. What really matters, is the workers conscious willingness to forgo a big guarantee, in favor of a potentially larger payout based on his or her performance. It's an entirely different form of risk, that is the opposite of a weekly or monthly paycheck.

[...]

If, as a contracted employee who signed on for the sole purpose of making money, I did everything I was supposed to do to earn a payout of $5 million dollars, I would expect to be paid. I assumed a level of risk, and preformed as asked. A deal is a deal. The only circumstance that could justify a non-payment, would be the bankruptcy of the firm. (That's the biggest part of the risk I assumed, working in a volatile and competitive industry.) However, if the company stays in business, or is not allowed to fail, I'd absolutely expect my money. And if I got it, and was then suddenly asked to return it because the government realized it looked politically stupid and fiscally foolish for subsidizing my big fat bonus with taxpayer money, I might be inclined to say "I'm sorry, but I'm a tax-payer too. If you didn't want to pay me what I was legally owed, you should have let the company fail. My deal was with AIG, not you."

This "bonus rage" would not be happening in a world that respected consequences, because in that world, those companies who can not afford to pay their bills would simply fail, the way they're supposed to. Likewise, all citizens would live the lifestyle they can afford, the way they're supposed to. Of course, that is not the world we live in. In fact, companies like AIG have prospered exactly because so many people now live beyond their means. The hard truth is, those big bonuses were earned because AIG got rich saying "yes" to millions of people who should have been told "no." And because we're all connected, we all get hurt. (emphasis added)

Mike Rowe is a smart guy.

The Anti-AIG Mob Goes After the Wrong Guy

This is what happens when mobs get out of control:

As AIG employees get disturbing threats from people ticked off about bonuses that came in the wake of the federal bailout, the state has thrown someone into the fire who did not belong there, a state representative says.

Christopher Pohle, of New Canaan, was falsely identified as an AIG employee who received a retention bonus, State Representative John W. Hetherington, said in a news release Thursday. To be clear, everyone, he did not get a bonus.

Pohle is demanding that the State of Connecticut, including the Attorney General and the legislature’s Banks Committee, apologize and issue a retraction.

“Mr. Pohle has not been employed by AIG for over a year. He left AIG in January 2008. He did not receive a retention bonus and did not work with credit derivatives,” Hetherington said in the release.

“Mr. Pohle was recklessly targeted, his reputation and good standing have been harmed and he and his family have been unfairly drawn into this situation.”

Pohle’s name was among 13 people who were subpoenaed last week to testify during a Banks Committee hearing, according to several news reports.

State officials obtained the names from media accounts about the bonuses, the Stamford Advocate reports.

It may be a year or two before we know just how much damage Congress did when they decided to demonize AIG executives.

An AIG Resignation

At this link you'll find an email from a former AIG executive to the company's chairman. It's a pretty good read.

This employee, who agreed to work for $1 a year with the promise of a retention bonus, along with most of his brethren who received retention bonuses from AIG, was not responsible for the problems which brought AIG down, and yet they're being vilified by idiots in Congress, New York and Connecticut for staying on with the company and trying to wind it down in a way that would be most beneficial to taxpayers.

Because of the populist madness on Capitol Hill AIG's ultimate settlement will be worse than it should have been for taxpayers. Talented executives who know the most about the business and how to wind it down are now leaving the company because of the betrayal they feel from the AIG chairman and the politicians who represent the taxpayers they were trying to help.

And it's unlikely that AIG will be able to replace this talent. Yesterday in Los Angeles there was a job fair which thousands of potential applicants attended. AIG was represented there and according to a TV report I saw, where most employers had dozens of people waiting in line, AIG had one. One person interviewed said he wouldn't even consider AIG as an employer because the company's reputation has been so badly tarnished.

The government has poured $170 billion dollars into AIG to try and stave off collapse. That money will end up being wasted because through the government's own actions in creating a mob atmosphere of hatred toward AIG executives, the talent won't be there to save the company. It will ultimately fail.

Thanks, Congress.

By the way, have you given back the campaign contributions AIG gave you yet?

Goldman-Sachs to Give Back TARP Money

The taxpayers may get paid back sooner than expected as financial institutions are running scared from the out-of-control Congress:

Any good news these days — not that there is much — seems to come with an asterisk. The market is popping, but, as some bears ask, is it just a setup for another bigger fall?

So here’s something else to ponder: Goldman Sachs is planning to give back its TARP money soon. Very soon, actually — ideally within the next month, according to people involved in the process. That’s a much quicker timetable than the end-of-year goal previously set out by Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’s chief executive. As taxpayers, we should be thrilled that Goldman is going to quickly pay back the $10 billion it was given last October, right?

Well, not so fast.

Goldman’s sudden urgency to return the money stems, in part, from the uproar over A.I.G.’s bonuses last week, and the criticism of Goldman over revelations that the firm had been the largest recipient of government money as a counterparty of bets placed with A.I.G. It’s also paying a hefty 5 percent interest payment to taxpayers for that money.

“It’s just impossible to run our business in this environment,” said one senior Goldman executive who insisted on not being quoted by name for fear of crossing the Treasury Department.

In other words, we don't want those unwashed ACORN maggots marching around in front of our homes if we happen to issue bonuses. And we don't want Barney Frank lisping our names in a Banking Committee hearing.

Today's One Word Commentary

This headline on Fox:

N.Y. Attorney General: 15 AIG Execs Agree to Return Bonuses

My one word commentary: Wimps.

Congressional Rich Hunt Could Destroy Financial Industry

Here's more blowback from the congressional hissy-fit over AIG bonuses:

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks.

“Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it,” said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. “This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG.”

The banker added: “It’s like a McCarthy witch-hunt...This is the most profoundly anti- American thing I’ve ever seen.”

Vikram Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, told employees in a memo that some anger about executive compensation was “warranted”. But he hit out against the idea of a special tax. “The work we have all done to try to stabilise the financial system and to get this economy moving again would be significantly set back if we lose our talented people because Congress imposes a special tax on financial services employees,” he wrote.

Some policymakers expressed concern that banks may try to break out of the government’s embrace by paying back public capital even if the price is a more severe credit squeeze.

They also fear that financial institutions may decide not to take part in public-private partnerships to finance credit markets and acquire toxic assets.

The outcry followed Thursday’s approval by the House of Representatives of a bill that would impose 90 per cent tax on bonuses to employees whose gross income exceeded $250,000 at bailed-out firms.

Next week the Senate will also consider a hefty tax on bail-out bonuses amid calls for an investigation into who was responsible for allowing the pay-outs. Some senators are calling for a committee hearing on a bill that would impose a 70 per cent tax at bailed-out institutions, half paid by employees and half by companies, arguing that a delay would help cool political anger.

“There are three big industries where the US has global leadership: financial services, media and technology. Introducing this 90 per cent tax is like taking one of those industries out the back and shooting it,” said a top Wall Street executive.

Treasury is going to need dance partners to help with the toxic assets. Why would any well run companies want to get involved with these idiots?

Biden's Economic Advisor Warns on Bonus Tax

There is clearly a panic developing in the Obama Administration over the stampede created by the rush to demonize the AIG executives who received bonuses as part of their employment contract:

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden’s economic adviser warned Sunday that a congressional plan to tax American International Group Inc. executives’ bonuses may go too far in using the tax code as a tool for retribution.

President Barack Obama has not said whether he would veto some version of a House-backed plan to heavily tax the $165 million in bonuses. Biden economist Jared Bernstein said it’s important to look at what version of the proposal comes out of the Senate.

“I think the president would be concerned that this bill may have some problems in going too far — the House bill may go too far in terms of some — some legal issues, constitutional validity, using the tax code to surgically punish a small group,” Bernstein said in a television interview. “That may be a dangerous way to go.”

As mentioned in a previous post, the rush to punish with confiscatory taxes will quickly scare away other healthy businesses from participating in government programs for fear of finding themselves on the bad end of some congressman's ire. Or worse, having a bunch of unwashed ACORN idiots marching up and down in front of his house.

AIG Stampede Will Scare Away Other Investors

The Administration is suddenly realizing that the public outrage stampede they created against the AIG bonuses may well backfire on them:

WASHINGTON -- AIG outrage is genuine, but be careful about the fallout, said the head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, noting that private investors are "kind of doing us a favor" in buying toxic assets and should be recognized for their contribution.

Adviser Cristina Romer told "FOX News Sunday" that private firms not getting federal bailout money should not be intimidated by Congress' decision to tax executive bonuses by 90 percent because they understand that this is a new culture of doing business.

"We've got banks with a lot of toxic assets, what 'toxic' means is they are highly uncertain ... so that is certainly the big picture, and that is going to be the main reason for doing this ... We simply -- we simply need them. We need them -- you know, we've got a limited amount of money that the government has to go in here, so we need to partner, not just with private firms, but with the FDIC, with the Fed, to leverage the money that we have," she said.

After the spectacle we've seen this week with congressmen acting like fools and ACORN protesters being bussed to AIG executive's homes, why would any solvent private business want to have anything to do working with the government? If I ran a firm in a position to help the government with their toxic asset problem, I'd run the other way as fast as I could. I don't care how much upside there might be financially, the downside of becoming a pawn in some congressman or "community organizer's" game wouldn't be worth it.

Media Chooses to Cover Only Politically Correct Protests

Yesterday several thousand people showed up in Orlando, FL for a Tea Party protest against the massive government spending currently undertaken by the government. Did you see it on TV?

Probably not.

However, 40 ACORN malcontents were bussed to the homes of AIG executives and that made every news report. They were waving signs such as "Capitalism is Organized Crime" and other socialist nonsense.

It's pretty clear that protests against the government will not be covered, but politically correct nonsense will be national news.

ACORN Group Leading AIG Protests

Want to take a tour with crazy people?

Less than a year ago, the most repellent area bus tour we knew of was the one that induced Sex and the City–crazed tourists to put $40 on their Citi cards for a cupcake and a glimpse at Carrie Bradshaw's brownstone. How times have changed! Now, everyone's clamoring aboard the Populist Rage Bus.

The Connecticut Working Families Party this weekend has organized a bus store that will make stops at Wilton, Connecticut, AIG office as well as the security-patrolled homes of AIG execs who are fearing for their lives.

"We're going to be peaceful and lawful in everything we do," said Jon Green, the director of Connecticut Working Families. "I know there's a lot of anger and a lot of rage about what's happened. We're not looking to foment that unnecessarily, but what we want to do is give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy."

Right, they're not fomenting rage, they're just encouraging it. So if you happen to record someone's address so you can return in the dead of night, it's not like Working Families told you to! We know we sound paranoid and we really can't believe we're actually on the same side as Rush, but this is getting way out of hand. Oh, to have fat ladies in high heels clogging up the West Village again.

As it turns out Connecticut Working Families was founded by ACORN, and "community organizers" who have become the street goons for the Democrat party.

The Other Side of the AIG Bonus Story

From the Washington Post:

They watched quietly as members of Congress referred to them as greedy and incompetent. They heard more than one demand that their names be released to the seething American public. They heard the chairman of American International Group, Edward M. Liddy, tell lawmakers that people, in e-mails sent to AIG-FP, suggested that the firm's leaders "should be executed with piano wire around their necks."

The evening before, the firm's chief operating officer, Gerry Pasciucco -- whom Liddy recruited in November from Morgan Stanley to shut down Financial Products before it could do more harm to the economy -- had gathered them together in the same spot.

Pasciucco urged them to keep their heads down, to act professionally and to continue working to extricate Financial Products from its more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding derivative contracts. He acknowledged that the past few days have been like being "inside the piñata."

In reply, they told him that they worried mostly about getting shot, despite the guards now patrolling the parking lot, the front door and some of their homes.

A sense of fear hung in the room -- the palpable, unsettling kind that flashes across people's eyes. But there was anger, too. No one would express it publicly, of course. Who wants to hear a wealthy financier complain? And yet, within those walls off Danbury Road lies a deep sense of betrayal -- first by their former colleagues, now by their elected leaders.

The handful of souls who championed the firm's now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president.

"They've chosen to throw us under the bus," said a Financial Products executive, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. "They have vilified us."

In summary, the Congress has decided to play straw man with a bunch of folks who have been working their butts off for the taxpayers in an effort to return as much value as possible from AIG. In exchange their efforts, they are now villains who dare to exercise their rights as codified in their employment contracts.

And there's more:

Before he waded into the circus on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Liddy e-mailed a letter to the employees of Financial Products, asking them to "step up and do the right thing." He asked that anyone who received more than $100,000 in retention payments return at least 50 percent.

The Financial Products staff met twice Wednesday inside one of the firm's large, glass-walled conference rooms to discuss the boss's letter. Numerous employees indicated that they would be willing to return the money, but most wanted nothing more to do with the firm. It was a preview of the possible exodus to come, one that concerns Liddy himself.

"My fear is that the damage is done," he told a congressional subcommittee. "That they will return [the money], but that they will return it with their resignations."

There is little doubt within Financial Products that he's right about that.

"Nobody is going to give it back and then stay," said one of the firm's employees. "If they give back the money, then they will walk. And they will walk into the arms of AIG's counterparties."

Let's let Barney Frank and Chris Dodd run AIG. Let's see how well they do.

I previously detailed my response had I been one of the AIG employees. After watching idiot Democrats in the House bloviating about this, I think I'd add something. I'd demand to appear at a hearing in the House and during that hearing I would take out $100 in $1's and ceremoniously throw it at Barney Frank and his committee. You want the money back? Here you go. I'd be sure to take the strap off so the bill would be fluttering down in every direction.

That would be good TV.

Dodd Throws Obama Under the Bus

Chris Dodd must be pretty concerned about this chances for re-election next year. He's already been blamed, and rightfully so, for blocking reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the banking crisis, and he's also been fingered as they guy who put language in the TARP bailout protecting AIG's much-maligned bonuses.

However, Dodd enjoys his cushy job in D.C. and will do whatever he can to keep it, including throwing the president under the bus:

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said the Obama administration asked him to insert a provision in last month’s $787 billion economic- stimulus legislation that had the effect of authorizing American International Group Inc.’s bonuses.

Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said yesterday he agreed to modify restrictions on executive pay at companies receiving taxpayer assistance to exempt bonuses already agreed upon in contracts. He said he did so without realizing the change would benefit AIG, whose recent $165 million payment to employees has sparked a public furor.

Dodd said he had wanted to limit executive compensation at companies that got money from the government’s financial-rescue fund. AIG has received $173 billion in bailout money. His provision was changed as the stimulus legislation was negotiated between the House and Senate.

“I did not want to make any changes to my original Senate- passed amendment” to the stimulus bill, “but I did so at the request of administration officials, who gave us no indication that this was in any way related to AIG,” Dodd said in a statement released last night. “Let me be clear -- I was completely unaware of these AIG bonuses until I learned of them last week.” He didn’t name the administration officials who made the request.

All this does is throw gasoline on the fire. The press and GOP will now have even more reason to dig further into this mess to try and find the scapegoat. Nobody is going to believe either Dodd or the Obama people.

Big fun.

Shep Smith on the AIG Hearings

I caught part of the AIG hearings from my dad's hospital room, and frankly it was disgusting. If the hospital wouldn't have gotten rather perturbed, I would have ripped that TV right off the wall when Barney Frank started demanding the names of AIG execs who "didn't give the bonus money back".

Shepherd Smith on Fox had some thoughts too. It's good TV:

Don't Give the Money Back

The testimony before Congress by AIG chief Edward Liddy included some really dumb stuff:

WASHINGTON: As the lucrative bonuses paid to employees of the American International Group fueled fresh outrage at the White House and on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the embattled chief executive of A.I.G. said that he had asked some recipients to give at least half the money back.

The chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, made the announcement during his testimony on Wednesday afternoon before a congressional committee investigating the problems at the company.

"I have asked the employees of AIG Financial Products to step up and do the right thing," Mr. Liddy told lawmakers. "Specifically, I have asked those who received retention payments of $100,000 or more to return at least half of those payments."

The A.I.G. chief said that some bonus recipients had already offered to give up all of their payments.

Fools. I wish I was one of those AIG execs getting one of those bonuses. If they came to me and demanded I give up 1/2 of a bonus earned as part of an employment contract, I'd tell them where to put their request.

For fun, let's just pretend I am one of those guys, and I've been called to task before Barney Frank's Banking Committee:

Barney Frank: (lisping) Mr. Moore, did you receive a bonus payment from AIG?

Rick Moore: You betcha.

BF: Are you going to give it back?

RM: Fat chance. I met my responsibilities according to my employment contract. AIG must meet theirs.

BF: Have you no shame taking this money from taxpayers?

RM: Have you no shame after creating this entire banking collapse?

BF: (now lisping and spitting) We will taxth you and get all that money back!

RM: Go ahead. You think I'm afraid of some congressman who has never run anything but his mouth his entire life? If you try and tax this money I'll have you in federal court so fast the spit from your latest lisp won't even have hit the floor yet. By the time I'm done having your new tax law declared unconstitutional I'll not only have all of my money, but a lot of yours too. Go for it, Barn!

BF: (spit)(lisp)(stutter)(stammer)

That would be so much fun. Here's more on the potential legal swamp Barney Frank is wading into.

The Dems' Circular Firing Squad

Politico has the story:

Congressional Democrats careened between the circular firing squad and the three-ring circus Tuesday as they struggled with their new reality: playing defense on the economy.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) blamed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for letting bailed-out insurance giant American International Group pay $165 million in bonuses to its employees, saying he wrote a letter to Geithner two weeks ago warning him of just such a possibility.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), tagged by Republican aides for sponsoring an amendment to the stimulus bill that allowed the bonuses, shifted the blame to the Treasury Department and “the bill conferees,” saying he had no idea that the AIG bonuses were coming.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), joined by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), introduced a bill that would impose a 70 percent tax on “excessive” compensation paid to employees of all bailed-out companies. President Barack Obama has said the White House would use all legal means possible to get the bonuses back, but House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) acknowledged that there were “some questions” as to whether Congress could do anything at all.

And while Hoyer begged AIG execs to give up the money voluntarily, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) just tried to change the subject. Asked about Geithner’s role in failing to stop the bonuses, Reid said: “Let’s talk about what we have accomplished this Congress.”

Nice try.

For the second day in a row, the AIG bonuses were just about the only subject of conversation at the Capitol. At press conferences throughout the day — and as members filed in and out of a St. Patrick’s Day lunch — outrage over bonuses was on everyone’s lips.

And that suited long-suffering Republicans just fine.

I'll bet it did. Better to stand back and let them fire away.

Dodd and Obama Also Received AIG Bonuses

Scrappleface has a take on the AIG bonus mess:

Obama, Dodd Outraged at AIG Campaign Cash

from ScrappleFace by Scott Ott

(2009-03-17) — As the furor over AIG executive bonuses threatened to bring the current economic recovery to a halt, President Barack Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd today threw fuel on the fire, announcing their “fierce outrage” upon hearing that the insurance giant had given each of their campaigns more than $100,000 last year.

“While AIG was collapsing, and her executives crawling to DC with hat in hand,” said Sen. Dodd, D-CT, “my campaign, and then-Senator Obama’s were getting what can only be termed influence bonuses from the same firm. Naturally, I knew nothing about this, and I’m now seething with anger at the injustice.”

President Obama and Sen. Dodd were the two largest recipients of campaign contributions from the beleaguered company, and the only politicians to garner six-figure amounts from AIG in 2008 — $103,100 for Sen. Dodd and $100,332 for presidential candidate Obama.

You can read the rest at the link.