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How is Oldtimer going to blame this on Bush.

Tam

Well-known member
Geithner said he only knew about the AIG bonuses a week ago BUT Libby under oath said the FED (Geithners former employer) was in on the AIG board meetings and had to have known about the contracts and bonuses over a year ago.
The Senators are ripping Libby but the Dems are the ones that passed a Stimulus Bill WITHOUT READING IT that protected the bonuses being paid out. The Dems removed the amendment put forward that would have stopped the bonuses and in a close door meeting held by Pelosi, Reid and Emanual put in an amemdment that protected the bonuses It came out today that the amendment was made with the Treasury Department knowledge. Now Geithner, Senate and the White House is going after AIG to get the bonuses back. How is Oldtimer going to blame this on Bush. :?
 

jigs

Well-known member
of course this is Bush's fault. EVERYTHING is Bush's fault.

hell, even when the wise people of Montana who woke up and voted Oldtimers lazy ass out of office was probably Bush's fault....
 

Tam

Well-known member
I was watching the hearing today and it made me sick to think these guys were ripping Libby after they voted to protect the bonuses. If they had bothered to slow down Pelosi, Reid and Obama on the Stimulus package maybe they would have known about the measures that were stuck in during that close door meeting. Obama signed something into law that he evidently did not read, so if he is upset over the Bonuses maybe he should look in the mirror and talk to that guy about his actions of the bonuses :wink:
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Tam said:
Geithner said he only knew about the AIG bonuses a week ago BUT Libby under oath said the FED (Geithners former employer) was in on the AIG board meetings and had to have known about the contracts and bonuses over a year ago.
The Senators are ripping Libby but the Dems are the ones that passed a Stimulus Bill WITHOUT READING IT that protected the bonuses being paid out. The Dems removed the amendment put forward that would have stopped the bonuses and in a close door meeting held by Pelosi, Reid and Emanual put in an amemdment that protected the bonuses It came out today that the amendment was made with the Treasury Department knowledge. Now Geithner, Senate and the White House is going after AIG to get the bonuses back. How is Oldtimer going to blame this on Bush. :?

I don't know who Libby is Tammy :wink: - but Mr. Liddy testified that Treasury Secretary Geithner only was made aware of the bonus's being paid by AIG in the last week or two-- it was Bernankes's boys (the US Fed) that had sat in the board meetings and have given their nod of approval on the contracts....
 
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Anonymous

Guest
And if someone wants to watch the hearing- they just started replaying it again on CSPAN......
 
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Anonymous

Guest
Sandhusker said:
reader (the Second) said:
They get all their "news" from www.worldnet.com :roll: :roll: And then garble it some more.

I just got the news about Dodd lying from CNN. Is that good enough for you?

I doubt if Reader voted for Dodd- I know I didn't....
 

alice

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
reader (the Second) said:
They get all their "news" from www.worldnet.com :roll: :roll: And then garble it some more.

I just got the news about Dodd lying from CNN. Is that good enough for you?

And I watch it as it happens from C-span...is that good enough for you?

Alice
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
alice said:
Sandhusker said:
reader (the Second) said:
They get all their "news" from www.worldnet.com :roll: :roll: And then garble it some more.

I just got the news about Dodd lying from CNN. Is that good enough for you?

And I watch it as it happens from C-span...is that good enough for you?

Alice

Watching is a waste of time of time if it isn't sinking in. What did you think of Dodd's lie as you watched it? Did you catch it?
 

Tam

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Tam said:
Geithner said he only knew about the AIG bonuses a week ago BUT Libby under oath said the FED (Geithners former employer) was in on the AIG board meetings and had to have known about the contracts and bonuses over a year ago.
The Senators are ripping Libby but the Dems are the ones that passed a Stimulus Bill WITHOUT READING IT that protected the bonuses being paid out. The Dems removed the amendment put forward that would have stopped the bonuses and in a close door meeting held by Pelosi, Reid and Emanual put in an amemdment that protected the bonuses It came out today that the amendment was made with the Treasury Department knowledge. Now Geithner, Senate and the White House is going after AIG to get the bonuses back. How is Oldtimer going to blame this on Bush. :?

I don't know who Libby is Tammy :wink: - but Mr. Liddy testified that Treasury Secretary Geithner only was made aware of the bonus's being paid by AIG in the last week or two-- it was Bernankes's boys (the US Fed) that had sat in the board meetings and have given their nod of approval on the contracts....

AIG Bonuses Have Been Known About For Months
Failed Insurance Giant Filed Plans For Payouts In Nov.;
White House Scrambles To Explain Actions
Timeline: U.S. Credit Crunch & Financial Failures

WASHINGTON (CBS) ― Mar 18, 2009

Cue the outrage.

For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.

Why the sudden furor, just weeks after Barack Obama's team paid out $30 billion in additional aid to the company? So far, the administration has been unable to match its actions to Mr. Obama's tough rhetoric on executive compensation. And Congress has been unable or unwilling to restrict bonuses for bailout recipients, despite some lawmakers' repeated efforts to do so.

The situation has the White House and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the defensive. The administration was caught off guard Tuesday trying to explain why Geithner had waited until last Wednesday to call AIG chief executive Edward M. Liddy and demand that the bonus payments be restructured.

I don't know if he (Geithner) should resign over this," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told CBS' The Early Show Tuesday, "But I can tell you, this is just another, you know, example of where he seems to be out of the loop."

Publicly, the White House expressed confidence in Geithner - but still made it clear he was the one responsible for how the matter was handled.

While administration officials insisted Tuesday that neither Mr. Obama nor Geithner learned of the impending bonus payments until last week, the problem wasn't new. AIG's plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored. A November SEC filing by the company details more than $469 million in "retention payments" to keep prized employees.

Back then, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., began pumping Liddy for information on the bonuses and pressing him to scale them back. "There was outrage brewing already," Cummings said. "I'm saying (to Liddy), 'Be a good citizen. ... Do something about this.'"

Liddy will appear before the House Financial Services Committee to face questions over the widely criticized bonuses.

Around the same time, outside lawyers hired by the Federal Reserve started reviewing the bonuses as part of a broader look at retention and compensation plans, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The outside attorneys examined the possibility of making changes to the company plans - scaling them back, delaying them or rescinding them. They ultimately concluded that even if AIG's bonuses were withheld, the company would probably be sued successfully by its employees and be forced to pay them, the officials said.

Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Barney Frank, told CBS' The Early Show Wednesday that Congress should rewrite a Depression-era law the Federal Reserve used to give AIG its initial government bailout.

The Massachusetts Democrat said Congress had no say in the decision last fall to plow $85 billion in taxpayers money into the insurance giant, and said that because of that no conditions were attached to the deal to limit or restrain the payment of executive bonuses.

"It is my hope" that Congress will amend the statute that enabled the Fed to make the direct loan to AIG.

In January, Reps. Joseph E. Crowley of New York and Paul E. Kanjorski of Pennsylvania wrote to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department pressing the administration to scrutinize AIG's bonus plans and take steps against excessive payments.

"I at that point realized that we were going to have a backlash with regard to these bonuses," Kanjorski said in an AP interview. In a meeting with Liddy later that month, he said he told the AIG chief that "all hell would break loose if we didn't find a way to inform the public ... and that we should take every step to put that information out there so we wouldn't have the shock."

Around the same time, Congress and Mr. Obama's team were passing up an opportunity to put in place strict laws to revoke bonuses from recipients of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments.

"There was a lot of lobbying against it and it died," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who proposed the measure with Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. He said Mr. Obama's team is sending mixed messages on what will and won't be tolerated on bonuses, with the president coming out strongly against excessive Wall Street rewards but top officials not following through.

"The president goes out and says this is not acceptable, and then some backroom deal gets cut to let these things get paid out anyway," Wyden said. "They need to put this to bed once and for all."

Last Wednesday, an apparently tense conversation between Geithner and Liddy brought the matter to a head. Geithner had learned of the bonus payments the previous day, said a Treasury Department official familiar with the government's dealings with AIG.

Liddy, in a letter to Geithner on Saturday, referred to their "open and frank conversation" over the retention payments on March 11. "I admit that the conversation was a difficult one for me," Liddy wrote.

On Thursday, as Treasury lawyers scrambled to find a way to cancel the payments, Geithner informed the White House of the situation, and senior aides there relayed it to Mr. Obama, the administration officials said.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed information from AIG on Monday to determine whether the payments made over the past weekend constitute fraud under state law. He said contracts written in March 2008 guaranteed employees 100 percent of their 2007 pay for 2008, regardless of their performance.

Seven of the executives received more than $4 million each and one got more than $6.4 million, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Meanwhile, the administration moved to get ahead of what was certain to be an embarrassing story.

Unprompted, officials leaked news of the bonuses to select reporters late Saturday afternoon, highlighting what Geithner had done to try to restrain the payments. The story quickly became fodder for the Sunday news talk shows.

Then on Monday, the president himself came out strongly on the issue, calling the payments "an outrage" and publicly directing his team to look for ways to cancel the payments.

Questioned repeatedly to explain this in light of the fact that the administration had already scoured its options and come up empty - and that the bonuses had already gone out the door to their recipients - Gibbs said that the president wanted his aides to make sure "to exhaust all legal remedies."

That's done little to quell the expressions of outrage that were blasting about by Tuesday.

"It's shocking," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader, that "the administration would come to us now and act surprised."

Tell us again how Geithner the chief architect of the AIG bailout and Obama didn't know about the bonuses until a week ago Oldtimer. :wink:

Then on Monday, the president himself came out strongly on the issue, calling the payments "an outrage" and publicly directing his team to look for ways to cancel the payments.

Who was at fault if Obama's administration and the Congress knew about the bonuses and they passed a bill protecting them? :wink:
 

Tam

Well-known member
Tim Geithner can't take all the blame for AIG bonus debacle
Posted By: James Quinn at Mar 18, 2009 at 09:45:22 [General]
Posted in: Foreign Correspondents , Business , Eagle Eye , Financial Crisis
Tags:AIG, bailout, bonus, Congress, geithner


Is the $165m bonus scandal engulfing American International Group (AIG) all Tim Geithner's fault?

Republican Senator Richard Shelby seems to think it is - asking if the embattled Treasury Secretary knew about the bonuses but "looked the other way". I'm not so sure.

The reason Geithner - who, to be fair, has a lot on his plate right now - is being fingered by Shelby is because it's clear that something's gone wrong here, and most of the politicians baying for blood don't know who to blame.

Geithner is an easy target because he was the man who agreed to hand over $30bn in fresh government funds to AIG just two weeks ago. That's on top of the $143bn the insurer has already taken from the US taxpayer.

Why didn't he attach conditions to the new funding that would have made the payment of these bonuses impossible? Easier said than done, particularly given he was only following the terms of the earlier bail-outs.

But wait a minute, wasn't he involved in that bail-out too? Yes, he was. As then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was instrumental in crafting AIG's original $85bn and the terms that went with it, which centered on the US government gaining 80pc of the insurer's equity and a new broom in the boardroom.

But Geithner was not alone in crafting the legislation, which was signed-off on by his then boss, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, and the man he would go on to replace, ex-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

To look at the whole bonus issue from another perspective, however, perhaps it was the case then that no-one, outside of AIG, knew they were to be paid until this weekend?

But that's a theory that's blown out of the water by Andrew Cuomo's letter to Barney Frank on Tuesday, which reminds those new to AIG that the bonus issue - so hot right now - is in fact old in the tooth.

Back in October, Cuomo, the New York Attorney General, got AIG chairman Ed Liddy to agree not to pay any money from the $600m compensation pool designated for the controversial Financial Products division.

Lawyers working for both AIG and the Treasury spent hours poring over the contracts between the company and employees with the FP arm to see if it could renege on its 2008 bonuses.

The eventual advice - given the contracts stated that 2008 bonuses had to be equal to the value of 2007 bonuses, which related to a much stronger financial performance and had already been paid - was no, and so the bonuses were paid, last Friday.

In other words, any of those involved in the situation between October and now - Cuomo, Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke - could revealed what was about to happen in an attempt to stop the payments from being made. None did.

And so now all Congressional leaders like Richard Shelby have left is a lot of hot air and the hope of taxing the bonuses so extremely that whoever received them - and we may never know unless Cuomo gets his way - will end up with very little indeed.

As an aside, it should be noted that the original version of the Senate's fiscal stimulus bill contained legislation - championed by Senator's Olympia Snowe and Ron Wyden - that would have clawed-back all bonuses over $100,000 paid by companies receiving federal funds, or levied a 35pc excise tax on the money.

But in the closed-doors rush to reduce the overall size of the stimulus package, that clause was eradicated. So Congress now has to reinvent the wheel and attempt to apply it historically.

The lesson of the AIG bonus affair would, based on what we know, appear to be the result of a number of failings, and not just one man.

The problem here is that although the US government controls 80pc of AIG's equity, it is not actually running the company, nor does has it put adequate oversight into place to ensure that instances like this do not occur.

Instead it has allowed the company to continue to run itself, with very few guidelines, and even fewer rules, and so, as a commercial entity which thinks it knows what's best for its own future, it continues to take decisions which are anathema to those who fund it.

Tell us again how Geithner didn't know until a week ago Oldtimer :wink:

it was Bernankes's boys (the US Fed) that had sat in the board meetings
BTW Oldtimer who was one of the Fed chairman Ben Bernanke boys in New York?
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
OT missed the part that said:

"But wait a minute, wasn't he involved in that bail-out too?

Yes, he was. As then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was instrumental in crafting AIG's original $85bn and the terms that went with it, which centered on the US government gaining 80pc of the insurer's equity and a new broom in the boardroom"
 
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Anonymous

Guest
TexasBred said:
OT missed the part that said:

"But wait a minute, wasn't he involved in that bail-out too?

Yes, he was. As then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was instrumental in crafting AIG's original $85bn and the terms that went with it, which centered on the US government gaining 80pc of the insurer's equity and a new broom in the boardroom"

While I'll agree while as Chairman of the NY Fed, he worked with the US Fed and the Bush's Treaury Dept. on the basic plan of the Bailout to save the banks and AIG from failing and a complete run on the banks of the world---Mr. Liddy testified to Congress that it was his understanding and that it was apparent to him that Geithner knew nothing of these retention bonus contractual obligations (some of which Liddy said are quite complex)- and didn't know they were being paid out until he had met with him the week before to expressly tell him....
And since they became aware of it, it looks to me like the President and the Administration have been working quite well to either stop them- or get them back thru a special tax....
 

Mike

Well-known member
If Geithner didn't know, he would have been the only one in Washington that didn't....................

And if he didn't know, WHY DIDN'T HE KNOW? He was working the deal right?

This has been nothing but a 3 ring circus with the dems carrying on like a pack of clowns. Meanwhile...........Rome burns............... :roll:
 

Tam

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
TexasBred said:
OT missed the part that said:

"But wait a minute, wasn't he involved in that bail-out too?

Yes, he was. As then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was instrumental in crafting AIG's original $85bn and the terms that went with it, which centered on the US government gaining 80pc of the insurer's equity and a new broom in the boardroom"

While I'll agree while as Chairman of the NY Fed, he worked with the US Fed and the Bush's Treaury Dept. on the basic plan of the Bailout to save the banks and AIG from failing and a complete run on the banks of the world---Mr. Liddy testified to Congress that it was his understanding and that it was apparent to him that Geithner knew nothing of these retention bonus contractual obligations (some of which Liddy said are quite complex)- and didn't know they were being paid out until he had met with him the week before to expressly tell him....
And since they became aware of it, it looks to me like the President and the Administration have been working quite well to either stop them- or get them back thru a special tax....

FOX got their hands on emails between the New York Fed, the Treasury and AIG about the bonuses dating back to Nov 2008 Oldtimer, So tell us again how Geithner didn't know before his claimed March 10th meeting with Liddy. :wink: He testified about them on March 3th so tell us again how he didn't know about them before his claimed March 10th date.

And if these contracts were so complex that Geithner couldn't figure them out then I guess we all know why he has yet to come up with a plan to get the economy going. :wink:


President and the Administration have been working quite well to either stop them- or get them back thru a special tax
. to bad they didn't read the Stimulus bill before Obama signed it They would have seen the AIG bonuses were protected under the Stimulus bill due to a measure Dodd put in and was revised under orders from the Treasury Department

AND to bad the House didn't read the Constitution about that "SPECIAL TAX" before they went off half cocked and passed it. That 90% Special Tax is Constitutionally ILLEGAL Oldtimer. :wink:
 

Steve

Well-known member
the answer on who to blame....really simple..

if you wrote the bill, your to blame.. if you voted for the bill your to blame, if you signed the bill your to blame...

and if you failed to read what you signed.. thenyou are more to blame

do you go with the "ignorance of the law excuses no one"

Ignorantia juris non excusat or Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (Latin for "ignorance of the law does not excuse" or "ignorance of the law excuses no one") is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because he or she was unaware of its content.

or do we go with "inadequate representation"
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
Steve said:
the answer on who to blame....really simple..

if you wrote the bill, your to blame.. if you voted for the bill your to blame, if you signed the bill your to blame...

and if you failed to read what you signed.. thenyou are more to blame

do you go with the "ignorance of the law excuses no one"

Ignorantia juris non excusat or Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (Latin for "ignorance of the law does not excuse" or "ignorance of the law excuses no one") is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because he or she was unaware of its content.

or do we go with "inadequate representation"

:clap:
 

hopalong

Well-known member
The ball is in oldtimers hands, look for a feint left while he tries to change the subject like he always does. :wink: :wink:
 
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