Jack & Jill Politics

…Then where the hell is MY bonus check? I know we may not want to talk about this anymore, but consider that your tax dollars bought AIG and WE, the people, OWN IT.  One of my co-workers wanted to know why he wasn’t getting broke off some of that bonus money, and all I could do was laugh, while knowing he was dropping truth.

While I don’t know Mr. Obama’s role in this, I know my friend Al Giordano at the Field, is saying cut the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, some slack, but my other buddy, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, has other ideas.  Peep this:

On the weekend of September 13th, AIG’s senior leaders were summoned to the offices of the New York Federal Reserve. Regulators from Dinallo’s insurance office were there, as was Geithner, then chief of the New York Fed. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who spent most of the weekend preoccupied with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, came in and out. Also present, for reasons that would emerge later, was Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. The only relevant government office that wasn’t represented was the regulator that should have been there all along: the OTS.

So, if the Office of Thrift Supervision does its damned job, we don’t be owning 80% of a shythole known as AIG. Nor does the rest of Wall Street belly up to the government trough and feed like the pigs they are.

I heard that some of the executives are willing to give back $50 million, maybe so they can get rid of those bodyguards they have to travel with these days – folks are THAT pissed.

Taibbi has more:

A short time later, it came out that AIG was planning to pay some $90 million in deferred compensation to former executives, and to accelerate the payout of $277 million in bonuses to others — a move the company insisted was necessary to “retain key employees.” When Congress balked, AIG canceled the $90 million in payments.

Then, in January 2009, the company did it again. After all those years letting Cassano run wild, and after already getting caught paying out insane bonuses while on the public till, AIG decided to pay out another $450 million in bonuses. And to whom? To the 400 or so employees in Cassano’s old unit, AIGFP, which is due to go out of business shortly! Yes, that’s right, an average of $1.1 million in taxpayer-backed money apiece, to the very people who spent the past decade or so punching a hole in the fabric of the universe!

“We, uh, needed to keep these highly expert people in their seats,” AIG spokeswoman Christina Pretto says to me in early February.

“But didn’t these ‘highly expert people’ basically destroy your company?” I ask.

Pretto protests, says this isn’t fair. The employees at AIGFP have already taken pay cuts, she says. Not retaining them would dilute the value of the company even further, make it harder to wrap up the unit’s operations in an orderly fashion.

I’ve been hearing it’s not really about the money – but it’s about power and a concentrated effort on Wall Street to take over every damn thing.  The more I think about this – the more I get pissed at Bill Clinton for pushing through deregulation just to stay ahead of the ReThug Controlled Congress.  It was literally set up for Bush and his homies to rape, pillage, plunder and steal, while walking away and telling the rest of us losing our homes, our jobs and a paycheck away from homelessness to kiss their asses.

It would be easy to absolve Geithner of blame, but he was the head of the New York Fed when this shyt went down before Obama was sworn in, and was one of the key architects of the first bailout.  I don’t think you’re supposed to put the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse, and yeah, the bonuses are small compared to what we paid to bailout Wall Street, but when do we stick a fork in it and pronounce it done?

I’d encourage everyone to read the entire Rolling Stone article and make up your own minds.  What I don’t want to see is the POTUS going down behind someone who still seems inclined to following Bush-lite policies under an Obama Administration.