Powered by TypePad

« A Compelling Message Of Personal Responsibility | Main | Mob Rule »

March 17, 2009

Comments

Old Lurker

But the most useful angle is to remind everybody how Obama promised, because he is so smart and surrounded by people that are so smart, to avoid just exactly this sort of thing, while lashing out at the incompetence of the Bush team. THAT's what makes this so delicious.

centralcal

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all JOMers!

Jane

Hey guys - Father Peter has manage to live stream 970 AM - so if you want to listen to FWDAJ live today you can do it at the LUN.

The link is on the left under: "Listen to the show live".

The link is also available at FWDAJ

DebinNC

What time, Jane?

centralcal

Cool Jane. I will try to tune in at work, once you let us know what time of day your program airs.

DebinNC

WSJ: The Real AIG Outrage

Jane

What time, Jane?

12-1 EST.

Next we will have to start taking calls so you guys can all call in and make me look good.

DebinNC

Spend now, details later

The Obama administration is working to prevent such stories [of "mass confusion"] about the stimulus bill.

I bet they're working mightily.

Ranger

Drudge is headlining a WaPo story that paints this as very bad for Obama:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031600640_pf.html>Anger Over Firm Depletes Obama's Political Capital

President Obama's apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

It seems this is re-enforcing the sense of Obama in over his head inside the Beltway.

clarice

I am so sorry I will be out then, Jane--but soon you'll have a three hour program I am sure of that.

Jane

No sweat Clarice, there is always next week.

Dorothy Jane

First of all - (I hate to be a dope) what is LUN?

Second - Obama is speaking and I can't help wonder - why are Bush's deficits EVIL and his MUCH MUCH BIGGER deficits are okie dokie? I just don't get it.

RichatUF

WaPo is doing their part.

Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all..."It's going to blow up," said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly."

Also OTS testimony on how many people were watching the AIG dots.

Seems that if Obama spooks off all the talent the AIG problem "solves itself"?

And good news Obama is doubling down on his budget and focusing on healthcare, environment, and education.

Old Lurker

"First of all - (I hate to be a dope) what is LUN?"

So easy to spot the newbies! Again, welcome DJ.

LUN = "Link Under Name" which means the poster has placed the URL of a link in the URL box on the comment form. That then makes the name Bold, and clicking on it takes one to the link.

hit and run

Jane:
Father Peter has manage to live stream 970 AM - so if you want to listen to FWDAJ live today you can do it at the LUN.

Awesome!

NEXT ASSIGNMENT: Live call-in number!!!

Captain Hate

I need something orange to wear today.

bio mom

Robert Gibbs, who represents Obama, is an oaf. His childish barbs about the Republican "cabal" yesterday could have been written by Paul Begala (and probably were). So unpresidential! So frat-boy! And so very insulting to the 47% of Americans who did not vote for Obama. I am quite disgusted by this.

Jane

Captain,

For some reason I always end up in orange on St.Paddy's day. I think it is subliminal or something.

bad

hey Dorothy Jane!!! good to see you again!!!

Etraneus

Is this how facism happens?

A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.
The government is fanning the flames. The president himself. Senators (R (Iowa)!) asking for seppuku on the part of business leaders. Talk about abrogating contracts, devising special legislation to tax only specific people. Incompetent buffoons like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd railing about incompetence.

All over $165M, a gnat compared to the elephant of waste, political payoffs and abuse inherent in the "stimulus" package, not to mention Obama's Robin Hood budget.

It's just outrageous, but instructive to be able to clearly see who the thugs are.

Charlie (Colorado)

I like this part:

Attorneys working for the Fed had been examining the matter for months and determined that the retention payments couldn't be touched because AIG would face costly lawsuits and be subject to penalties from states and foreign governments. Administration officials said over the weekend that they agreed with that assessment.

(Emphasis, of course, mine.)

So, after months of lawyering, they determined there was no legal way out, and the "Administration" agreed. Then it's gets out in the press and the O, in great outrage, says he wants Geithner to do anything legal to claw them back (which they'd already agreed was impossible) but does so after the checks went out (and I damn bet they were really wire transfers, so they've already cleared to the other's accounts.)

Q: What kind of idiots does he take us for?
A: First class.

centralcal

Also, Dorothy Jane (so glad you took our invitation to stick around), after you get the hang of LUN . . . you may want to downlad the Foxfire browser. Several of us who are html deficient (me *cough*) love it because we can do cool things like the techies here (bold, italics, links in the comments, etc.)

I still haven't figured out how some get little hearts (Ann, that would be you) and thingies in the comments.

centralcal

oh, and "downlad" is the Irish pronunciation of download.

Yes, I am Irish, 100%

hit and run

Over there on the memeorandum box:

Lydia Saad / Gallup:
Majority Receptive to Law Making Union Organizing Easier

Receptive? What kind of word is "receptive" in describing a poll result?

It's the kind of word one uses when one knows that the people don't really support the law, but can be persuaded (made receptive) by careful wording of the poll question.

Jane

oh, and "downlad" is the Irish pronunciation of download.

LOL

Well top o'the morning to you Centralcal.

clarice

Chaco, PUK, Rick, companeros de mi vida, Bubbalas, we are wasting our time--demagoguery is so much easier and-- dare I say it?-- far more profitable.

clarice

(I left out the others of you because you are clearly too honest to do this with a straight face..though Soylent could surely make the grade and was just dropped inadvertently.)

Ranger

I think the WaPo article is a shot across the bow of the administration. The long term hands in DC fear and angry public. The target may be AIG today, but action has a logic of its own, and revolutions eat their young. Those elected officials stoking the fires now may draw the angry crowds to DCs door demanding accountability for the hundreds of billions of pork passed out in the Porkulus bill. Those truely angered by the AIG stuff will start turning out for "tea parties."

Thomas Collins

LUN, Dorothy Jane, is Link Under Name. It refers the reader to the fact that clicking the name in bright blue unveils the web site that the poster has entered in the "Web Site URL" rectangle. So, you could say, in your case, LUN for the Paraphernalia blog (the blog reached when the bright blue "Dorothy Jane" is clicked).

If you are a dope, I am, too, because I had no idea what LUN meant when I first encountered it.

Charlie (Colorado)

Centralcal, type ♥ and you get ♥

DebinNC

Not wanting to waste the AIG crisis, Dems consider attaching BO's health care and cap/trade plans to the reconciliation bill and bypass Republicans entirely. LUN

Jane

&hearts

Just checking

Charlie (Colorado)

You know, let's assume that AIG were simply placed in receivership formally under Chapter 11. (Wouldn't qualify for Chapter 7, I don't think; much of AIG's business is still a going and profitable concern.)

Which, by the way, I suspect would have been preferable for several reasons.

Then they would have needed to wind down their positions, and they would have liked to do sowith the people who knew how it worked. But why would the high-powered folks want to stay, when they now knew they weren't going to get much of their expected compensation and were likely to be terminated at the end of the process?

Answer: they'd be offered retention bonuses, paying out in the future, in order to motivate them to stay.

What's more, these retention bonuses would be written so they were like debtor-in-possession; I don't know the legal term offhand, but you can be sure the retention bonus wouldn't be something that the court could reverse later, or else it wouldn't work. A retention bonus you can't be sure you'd get is no motivation to stay.

Charlie (Colorado)

Jane, you have to have the semicolon. '♥' not '&hearts'.

DebinNC

&hearts

Just checking

Jane, add a semicolon after hearts.

Extraneus

You need the ; at the end, Jane.

Caro

me, too.

Rick Ballard

"Is this how facism happens?"

No. That's just an illustration of the dirty socialist press working for the commie in chief. Although it's surely disquieting to the folks in that office it's as "real" as a college sit in or one of Sharpton or Jackson's street theater productions using the usual derelicts as props.

If unemployment went to 20% and people who actually want to work get mad, then the atmosphere becomes conducive for a 'March on Rome'.

Ranger's illustration is correct wrt general anger taking its own path. As the capital strike continues and the idiots "in charge" in DC fumble in the dark we could see more of a Tea Party atmosphere. The problem will remain that productive people generally won't take time off to engage in street theater and the rabble who can generally be motivated to set down their bongs for a morning are unlikely to demonstrate in favor of liberty.

If I were organizing Tea Parties, I'd shoot for Saturdays and focus on elected officials homes - say a nice visit to the Dodd in CT with signs displaying pictures of his Irish mansion saying "Where's ours?" underneath. That or a visit to Barney's Male Brothel in DC.

RichatUF

Jane-

forgot the semicolon.

I ♥ Jane

I ♥ St. Paddy's Day

Yea, Obama is using the crisis to double down on his budget. Yammer on about no tax increases but left out the part of rationing and tax increases in Medicare and tax increases as part of his less energy agenda.

Team Zero's Midnight in America Agenda.

Less but more expansive health care.
Less but more expensive energy.
Less but more expensive education.

clarice

Jane

ok

hit and run

&liver;

hit and run

Darn. Sure could use a new one of those.

Thomas Collins

Lots of ♥ ♥ ♥ for all JOMers on this Saint Paddy's Day!

clarice

Dodd is such a puke when you buy him he doesn't stay bought:
"Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday night floated the idea of taxing American International Group (AIG: 0.9822, 0.2021, 25.91%) bonus recipients so the government could recoup the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit. Within hours, the idea spread to both houses of Congress, with lawmakers proposing an AIG bonus tax.

While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.

Also, Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.

Dodd’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

One of AIG Financial Products’ largest offices is based in Connecticut"

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/dodd-cracks-aig---time/

Caro

trying for a shamrock.

Caro

Hey, it worked!
Happy ♣ Day. ♣ ♣ ♣

centralcal

Well, dang, I am at work, but don't want to miss out . . .

I ♥ the Irish

hit and run

Obama said that his stimulus bill would allow Caterpillar to rehire previously laid off employees. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090317/ap_on_bi_ge/caterpillar_layoffs>But now we get this:

PITTSBURGH – Caterpillar Inc. is laying off more than 2,400 employees at five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia as the heavy equipment maker continues to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.

Sometimes I just don't know if I can trust this guy.

clarice

I &heart; hit..Hit, why not blog that for AT?..I have to run out in a bit..

Caro
That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax.

Great catch, Clarice. What a hypocrite!

Fresh Air

And good news Obama is doubling down on his budget and focusing on ^ruining healthcare, environment taxing air, and education teaching minority children to hate whitey.

FTFY

bad

Ha ha, clarice, I've already stolen that Chris Dodd stuff and pasted it over at Tapper.

Stealin' from you next, Hit.

clarice

Thanks you, Caro--I hope Jane uses it today. Gosh he's even wrose than his crooked old man.

Ranger

Obama said that his stimulus bill would allow Caterpillar to rehire previously laid off employees. But now we get this:

PITTSBURGH – Caterpillar Inc. is laying off more than 2,400 employees at five plants in Illinois, Indiana and Georgia as the heavy equipment maker continues to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.

Sometimes I just don't know if I can trust this guy.

Posted by: hit and run | March 17, 2009 at 11:22 AM

We now have documented proof that Obama Lied, Jobs Died!

bad

Any lawmaker who voted for the stimulus bill voted for AIG bonuses.

The president signed that bill.

Looks like campaign commercials just got made.

narciso

His old man may have had some crooked dealings, but he was a patriot true and true
the same cannot be said of the Dodd the lesser
with a straight face. Supporter of the VietCong, Castro, the Sandinistas, and if pressed the Taliban if not explicitly AQ

Old Lurker

Rick, "The problem will remain that productive people generally won't take time off to engage in street theater "

Interesting observation: My partner's (business partner, stop that) son just got his MBA from appropriately big name school. Most of his class spent a chunk of time (the summer between years) working in other countries. Upon graduating, a surprising number of them went back to the Asian country they had visited.

So, combined with the already observed exodus of recently minted PhD's who are going elsewhere, I think we can add "brain strike" to "capital strike".

This is not a good thing for our team.

clarice

Well,narciso, that is true. The younger is a crook and a leftist..oddly he generally came thru for his rich Dem constituents in Ct. and throughout the financial industry.

Perhaps he's schizophrenic.

DebinNC

Caterpillar mentioned in this article about the damaging effects of the Obama tax schemes on big companies.

hit and run

Go Jane Go!

I ♥ live streaming Jane!

narciso

The problem is when he does something
seemingly right, it's for what we call economic motives, not any principle his vote on tort reform, gave us Enron and options disaster, his support for the CRA which benefited Countrywide for a time, and a quid pro quo. His father, former Justice Department
official, Nuremberg prosecutor, was cut of a different cloth, you notice how I can him the Lesser, instead of junior, or even the pretencious fils I use by Buckley the lesser.

Rick Ballard

OL,

This is the type of crap which bothers me at the moment. The advice given is bunkum from the "ten to fifteen years to recover" on the value of a house to the “If it’s the only thing marring their credit, it’s probably not a big issue,”.

A deadbeat is a deadbeat and there is absolutely no shortage of residential tenants at the moment. I'd fire a property manager who gave any special treatment to a deadbeat who had walked on a contract.

terry eckard

these guys should have been fired for screwing up in the first place..I do not know of any job where you screw up so bad ...and get a bonus! this pure stupied! contract? to do what..? come on !!!

kim

C'mon, read all about it, terry. These are the good guys who may be able to keep AIG from going thermonuclear.
================================

kim

You are buying the broad brush demagoguery, terry. Examine this closely so that you don't sound like a fired up member of a lynch mob.
====================

Will

Isnt the answer to this dont give them taxpayer money. I imagine in every occurrence of someone using taxpayer money at least 1/10th of 1 percent gets used foolishly.

The idea of stepping in and taking the money back is as abhorrent to me as AIG paying them in the first place. I have worked for low base and big bonuses before. You agree to that upfront.

Could the Feds decide that my employer takes govenrment money and is paying me too much??

Get the govenrment out of business.

kim

Obama and Dodd and the Democrats brought this on themselves. Read the point about what Dodd did in February to guarantee the bonuses and compare and contrast it with his rhetoric today. This sort of baloney permeates this administration. They are trying to cover themselves with demagoguery and you are going to let them get away with it.

Frankly, I think Obama and Gang are running scared. It should be obvious that they are largely to blame for a lot of this mess, and distracting the righteous anger is a panic tactic to deflect it. It can't last for long, because there is a lot more of this chaos coming down the road. They don't know what to do except be greedy, grasping, and demagogic. It is poor, poor governance.
==========================================
=================================================

kim

I like that Ranger: Obama Lied, and Jobs Died.
=============================================

Charlie (Colorado)

We now have documented proof that Obama Lied, Jobs Died!

Oh, crap, there goes the Apple stock.

Charlie (Colorado)

these guys should have been fired for screwing up in the first place..I do not know of any job where you screw up so bad ...and get a bonus! this pure stupied! contract? to do what..? come on !!!

Terry, if every trader who lost money were fired, there would be no one left in Manhattan south of 14th Street.

Charlie (Colorado)

Isnt the answer to this dont give them taxpayer money.

Will, because of the various insurance plans etc, we're gonna give them taxpayer money one way or the other.

Thomas Collins

Is the "February 11, 2009" exception under discussion the one provided by Section 111(b)(3)(D)(iii) of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, as amended by Section 7001 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (which is usually referred to as the stimulus bill)? I read these provisions as not relating to taxability, but allowing pre-2/11/09 contracts to escape the restrictions on bonus payments imposed on companies receiving TARP monies. It would seem to me that for American citizens and American residents (and for non-citizens and non-residents performing services effectively connected with the conduct of a US trade or business), bonus monies are subject to US income taxation notwithstanding when the contract providing the bonus becomes effective. There are special tax provisons in both the 2008 and 2009 acts affecting companies receiving TARP funds, but the 2/11/09 provision doesn't seem to be one of these.

I have LUNed a site providing links to the stimulus bill if others want to join in the statutory analysis fun (if my analysis is wrong, it won't be the first time).

The comments to this entry are closed.

Wilson/Plame