Michelle Malkin » Geithner crawls on his knees to AIG; Plus: Sunday open thread

Geithner crawls on his knees to AIG; Plus: Sunday open thread

By Michelle Malkin • March 15, 2009 07:21 AM

Busy with offline stuff today. What’s on your minds?

Here’s a blood-boiler of the morning. Mr. Lonely Tim Geithner — who was instrumental in putting together the wealth-redistributing AIG “rescue” plan — now apparently believes that if he says “pretty please with sugar on top,” the bailout behemoth will cut back on bonuses sure to deepen the disgust of outraged American taxpayers:

American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars.

AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments.

The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has asked that the company scale back future bonus payments where legally possible, an administration official said Saturday.

This official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Geithner had called AIG Chairman Edward Liddy on Wednesday to demand that Liddy renegotiate AIG’s current bonus structure.

Geithner termed the current bonus structure unacceptable in view of the billions of dollars of taxpayer support the company is receiving, this official said.

Fecklessness abounds.

Posted in: AIG, Tim Geithner

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#101

On March 15th, 2009 at 11:34 pm, Stillwaiting said:

We taxpayers are bailing out one of my co-workers who gambled and lost on her mortgage–she and her husband have the money to pay their mortgage, but the house is now worth less than they owe and they don’t want to live up to the deal they cut on the mortgage. The bank is forgiving the $150k she’ll owe after the short sale of her home. She was indignant that she might have to claim that forgiven debt as income. She now says she won’t have too. Why does that seem like adding insult to injury for those of us who are responsible?
#102

On March 16th, 2009 at 11:28 am, Laree said:

Imus announces he has stage II prostate cancer this morning.

http://imustimes.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/wabc-imus-announces-cancer-developing/

Depressing
#104

On March 16th, 2009 at 12:13 pm, twofoot said:

DoD has decided to stop selling expended brass to civilian reloaders. This will result in taking millions of rounds of ammo off the market. Not just .223 or 7.62. This will effect everyone that shoots.

http://www.theshootist.net/2009/03/dod-ends-sale-of-expended-military.html

This will quadruple the price of all ammo in just a few months.

Who wants to bet this was a directive from 1600 Pennsylvania?
#105

On March 17th, 2009 at 1:16 am, fulldroolcup said:

Yeah, just a followup. I was right. MOST of the AIG people getting commissions/bonuses/retenttion incentives are NOT in the toxic assets
category. So…Frack you all.

Make up yer frackin minds: do you want AIG to fail? If so, do you want a shiteload of commerce to grind to a halt, worldwide. Then drive the “performers” from the company.

Do you want AIG to succeed?: then keep yer frackin hands off the bonuses/commissions/retentions of the people who CAN make the company survive.

I feel I’m dealing with KOS and DU people here.

Sorry to see so many “conservatives” hating “the rich”, whether or not they’ve ever worked on commission themselves.

Ditto those who think any jackass can step into the shoes of people in the PROFITABLE parts of AIG business.

I sense I’m in the company of a bunch of Japanese “sararimen” here: a bunch of staff people who have NEVER had to “make a number”, or die if they don’t.

And that includes YOU, MM.