Congressional Kabuki theater: Why do we let Treasury/Fed/AIG walk all over us?
The Chicken Littles rushed to fork over billions to failing companies with no strings attached — and they’re still flummoxed about how they got taken for fools.
Let the curtains open on the latest act of Congressional Kabuki theater, via The Hill:
Senate Dems angry over four AIG bailouts
By Alexander Bolton
Posted: 03/03/09 12:11 PM [ET]Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee voiced frustration over recent decisions made by the Federal Reserve during a Tuesday morning hearing where they grilled Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Democrats and a few Republicans are irate over the latest infusion of taxpayer money into American International Group Inc. (AIG), which reported a record $62 billion quarterly loss on Monday.
The Fed is on track to spend close to $200 billion on the ailing financial conglomerate.
Federal officials announced over the weekend the latest installment in the series of bailouts, an additional $30 billion. The money will come from the $350 billion Congress approved for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) earlier this year.
This is the fourth time the federal government has intervened to rescue AIG. The newest cash infusion comes on top of a $60 billion loan, $50 billion to purchase toxic assets and $40 billion to purchase preferred shares of stock.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chaired the budget committee hearing, accused the Fed of keeping taxpayers “in the dark” about its overall strategy on AIG.
“I hope the fed will come clean in the coming days as to why [the AIG intervention] is so essential,” Wyden told Bernanke.
Bernanke replied that AIG exploited a “huge gap in the regulatory system” and said that he as angry as any lawmaker about AIG’s “huge numbers of irresponsible bets.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-
Ore.Wa.) said she was “really troubled by the manner we’re dealing with AIG.”
Still slow on the uptake, Patty.
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Trackbacks
- Propping Up AIG « The Forum
- Senate Democrats (as well as Republicans) are pissed over the *FOUR* AIG bailouts | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
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- Michelle Malkin » The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage
- The AIG Kabuki Theater | Citizen-Right
- Obama’s Marxist Magic Mess–Big Bad Bonuses–Radical Socialist Sleight of Hand « Pronk Palisades
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These people really can not be this dumb or incompetent.It’s just not possible. Therefore, I can only conclude they are a bunch of liars and thieves.
“Troubled” to a Democrat, means that they just don’t really know what is going on, but they think they have to say something, no matter how noncommittal.
Kind of like “I have full confidence in so and so….,” which is the political kiss of death to “so and so.” They usually “resign to spend more time with their family.”
How about you, Patty? Miss home?
Stupid is as stupid does.
Couldn’t have captioned it better!!
LMAO!
She looks like perfect fodder for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys to grunt “duhhhhh…uhhhhh-duhhhh….” if that shot of her face were to appear on the screen!
Weary Citizen
Oh, but they are that dumb, and the people who elected them are worse, sad to say.
I really think my head is going to EXPLODE!!!!!
So the democrat controled congres handed over hundreds of billions of dollars to people and never asked what they would do with it.
OKAY….
Eyeing the exit……
You know you can grow food year round in New Zealand right…
Eyeing the exit……
Go ahead and rub it in.
As you sow so shall you reap
Well, outside of demanding that part of it be returned as campaign contributions…..
You know the saying “Too big to fail”? Well, AIG now proves that some compainies are “Too big to exist”.
The root of all human misery is laziness. That is how politicians evolved. Some clever individual figured out that if he convinced the people of his tribe that if they gave him power over them, he could make their life better. The people, being inherently lazy, did so. And so it began, thousands of years ago, and continues today. Lazy people vote for politicians who promise to do everything for them. Politicians, as soon as they get elected, commence to do everything for themselves instead.
If you have one of thier most wanted professions, it is not hard to immigrate to New Zealand.
Note it is a socialist state but socialist light, not what is coming here.
Its economy is actualy considered more free than the usa’s.
This statement is disingenuous at best. Patty KNOWS that she MUST give AIG anything and everything that they want.
Collie, why don’t you tell everyone the reason why?
My collie says:
SO. As you can see, if Patty wants to remain a Senator from Washington state, she has NO choice except to give AIG whatever it wants. For her, it’s too big to fail.
#
Besides, they don’t put all of their weird critters in Congress and the Executive Branch.
I vote for BOTH!
Gotta get a collie like CyberCypher’s.
It’s hard enough to get my dog to take care of his business outside the house. Maybe if I put pictures of prominent Democrats on the lawn, that would entice the onslaught to move outdoors.
…but the $657,000 in the stimulus for brown tree snake management in Guam is not too troubling…
I had a collie when I was little. I always knew they were smart…. but mine could only communicate in single syllables….. darn!
If the person writing this was an actual reporter, he could have noted that these same Democrats voted for this money they are now supposedly “irate” over.
The MSM cannot go broke fast enough.
That’s because you were little. He was more eloquent with the adults.
I reckon the picture of Sen Murray (D, Slow) would appear in the dictionary next to the definition of “clueless.”
Sorry Michelle, but I disagree about your description of this fiasco being Kabuki Theatre.
It is much closer to being British Farce (i.e. Monty Python/Benny Hill) complete with Barney Frank in lingerie under his suit.
RetFireman: Thanks for that image — THERE goes MY appetite!
Irate????? AT WHO???? The only people they can be irate at is themselves. They voted for it, they decided who got it and they are the ones who continue to repeat the same mistake over and over and over again.
I can’t help but get a picture in my head of these morons standing around on The Floor, looking bewildered and saying to each other, “Whahappun?”
Patty Murry is actually my senator from Washington. Nice to see reporters checking their articles for errors.
Come on, tell me you guys can’t hear the Benny Hill theme song playing every time these morons are on television talking about how they are saving this country.
THEN STOP!!!!!
Crys…what frakking scatter-brains.
That is one smart collie. BTW, are you/he aware that in times of economic chaos and famine, people have been know to eat dogs to survive? Not to be alarmist but it may be advisable for him to stay out of site when things start falling apart. Plus we will all the help we can get.
Well, RetFireman, NOW I have the Benny Hill theme song running through my head…
It was ‘Yackety Sax’ by the way, and now I have Bubba Clinton running through my head.
Thanks again.
Sigh.
Yep!
By Boots Randolph.
Gary Locke’s cookbook says that collie tastes a lot like squab.
Patty Murray is so stupid that she needs someone to remind her when to breathe.
Bet you wouldn’t mind trading her to the State of Oregon for a Senator to be named later.
So who was in charge of Congress when this abomination TARP was passed?
Oh, never mind.
I can see the headline now —–
Benny Hill Goes To Washington !!
The United States government is saved.
Don’t forget the second bit we read when trades are announced (especially since we are talking about a socilaist):”…and an undisclosed amount of cash.”
Kaitian, your right, we here in Orygun have 2 of our very own liberal dullards…funny thing, Murry and Wyden look like they could be related or is that “deer in the headlights” look a tale tale sign of liberalism? It is an illness ya know.
madshark, no need to trade, both states are as blue as it gets and it’s not a pretty blue either.
The US Government has no business doing anything with AIG. Aside from the obvious agruments, AIG was not regulated by federal authorities. At all.
Insurance companies like AIG fought, and fought hard, to maintain their regulatory status at the state level. The states, keen to keep a big insurance company in their fold and in their tax base, kowtowed to these organizations via loose regulations and examinations.
AIG was regulated by the New York Insurance Commissioner. I have yet to see the State of New York coughing up one cent to fix the mess for which they served as the incubator.
If one viewed this as a bailout of the State of New York in addition to AIG, one would be correct. In the event of shortfalls, it is up to them to liquidate the remaining assets and to possibly dip into a reserve fund.
Business cycles have addressed similar issues in the past via turnarounds. The first step in any turnaround is getting rid of the management that got the company to the brink in the first place. After a lot of belt tightening, refocus on core businesses and changes in corporate practices, the company gets back on the road to recovery. That decision is squarely on the shoulders of a company’s board of directors.
What we have now is an effective bailout of corporate boards allowing them to abdicate their normal fiduciary duties. No management has been replaced – to the contrary, they have been paid bonuses, which are typically associated with superior performance.
It is beyond the time to force the Boards to do their jobs, to force the states to cover their own responsibilities and duties, and to stop exercising powers that are not afforded to the federal government in the Constitution.
tarpon, dems controlled the house, nan was speaker, and rinos controlled the senate, led by that beacon of conservatism john mccain, and his gang of centrists. bush brought a democrat to be the treasury czar from goldman sachs, and giethner was his protege. that is who brought us tarp 1 (350b) plus the aig 1 bailout and aig2 bailout.
When Pres. Clinton played it, it was “Yackety Sex”.
what’s hysterical about this is that this is the group who told us palin was too stupid to be vice president, while hiring biden into that position and allowing clueless patty to cast votes which effect the world economy.
My collie says:
Need more proof? Why else would Helen Thomas be part of the White House press corps at age 88?
Democrats in Congress have more important matters to contemplate. Waste, fraud, and abuse are going to have to wait.
Wha?! Dems and RINOs irate over using/abusing taxpayer money?
That’s their raison d’etre.
TARP has been replaced with the more accurate title “Socialist Congress Redistribute Everyone’s Wealth Economic Destruction” Act or SCREWED. Yep, we’re SCREWED.
Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell = DUMB and DUMBER
Remind you of a certain policman in “Casablanca” who was “Shocked” to discover there was gambling in Rick’s cafe?
How do these Congresspeople think this taxpayer money got infused in the first place? Did it simply show up on AIG’s doorstep one morning with a note tied to it saying, “Please give me a good home?”
Clueless Congressman have been do this Potomac two-step dance routine since the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
Maybe……just maybe…….I know I am asking a lot here, but MAYBE…. if congressmen actually READ, evaluated, discussed, and DEBATED what they were voting on this might not happen so often.
BUT….it is so much easier to be a lemming and posture….. forget what I said.
Why, yes. Yes they can be both that dumb and that incompetent. Worse, they are almost without exception, liars and thieves unparalleled in history for the sheer audacity and volume of their crimes.
Ugh, now I have to ShamWow the barf off my keyboard.
I think I heard somewhere on the news last night that the teacher pensions are heavily invested with AIG and that’s why they’re too big to fail…great, so the taxpayer is paying for the teacher pensions twice.
AIG is an insurer of a huge number of those toxic mortgage securities. They’re insolvent because they issued more credit default swaps than they can back up. The purchasing banks are all over the world, Europe is in worse shape than we are. Treasury is trying to contain the damage and keep the extend of it out of the news for fear of the consequences.
Read up on how bad it is in Europe, to get an idea of how badly AIG, and the US taxpayer, is exposed.
Look at the photo, at those dull lifeless eyes. Yes, they can.
Hard to imagine, but it is even Worse than that.
Financial experts have warned for over a decade that politicians were promising public employee unions pensions that could never possibly be paid.
To try to make it work, companies like AIG set up a house of cards that was gauranteed to fail. That house of cards is now collapsing.
I believe that it is impossible for the government to prevent this collapse because it is all made up with accounting tricks that can not to reconciled. Still waiting for some Ivy League smart guy to prove me wrong.
Now I’ll say it this time…
Look up “slack eyed mouth breather” in the encyclopedia and you’ll find that screen cap of Patty! Wow, what a pose.
Whaa ?!?!?!?!?!?
I don’t really want to know, but who did Helen Thomas eat?
ECS
These tools in Congress couldn’t pour water out of a boot with the instructions on the heel!! We are in SERIOUS Shite!!