Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Kanjorski Can't Keep His Hands Off The Money

Can you imagine the audacity of AIG giving out bonuses to its employees when it is taking federal bailout money?? The whole AIG discombubulation has been screwed up ever since it started. Now you have New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo investigating the AIG bonuses. Congress is threatening to enact an AIG tax because Chris Dodd put an amendment in the TARP package that helped AIG execs keep those bonuses.

Read this commentary from Larry Kudlow.

This whole AIG fiasco — where the entire political class is suddenly screaming over bonuses paid to derivative traders in AIG’s financial-products division — is just a complete farce. What it really shows is how the government has completely bungled the AIG takeover. Blame the Bush administration and the Obama administration. It also shows, once again, why the government shouldn’t run anything, because it cannot run anything.

And as for the $165 million or so in AIG bonus payments, the Obama administration — including the president, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and economic adviser Larry Summers — knew all about them many months ago. They were undoubtedly informed of this during the White House transition.

So there’s no big surprise. Nobody should be shocked. But President Obama is doing his best play-acting ever. He knows full well that the nationwide outcry against federal bailouts and takeovers is only going to get worse on his watch. His poll numbers are already falling, and this AIG episode is going to pull them down more.

Incidentally, has anybody asked Team Obama why it is more than willing to break mortgage contracts with a bankruptcy-judge cram-down, but won’t cram-down compensation agreements for AIG, despite the fact that the U.S. government owns the company? Kind of odd, don’t you think?


Along comes ABC News Jonatahn Karl who reports that Paul Kanjorski accepted 12,000.00 from AIG last year. Our tax money ended up in his campaign. He kept saying during the campaign and later how he was warning everyone of the impending financial crisis. But that didn't stop him from accepting our money through them.

At least Kanjo is now included in the "AIG's Best Friends ($$$) in Washington" list.

Wouldn't it make sense that if the execs have to give the bonuses back Kanjo should return the contributions???

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