House Approves Bill to Reclaim AIG Bonuses through New Tax

If you think lying bothers people like Jillian you would be wrong. Only when NON liberals lie is it a problem. To a die hard liberal a lie told by another liberal is JUST FINE. Liberals are above the law and are allowed to do anything they want because they earned that right by being smarter then us schmucks and the masses. To a liberal the ends ALWAYS justify ANY means, well as long as the Liberals are doing it. Laws are not for Liberals, they are for us masses to dumb to take care of ourselves.

What's with all the drama? You guys are cracking me up being all up in arms about this.

It's not like they are doing this to employees of a company that is in the black, following the rules, and not receiving enormous tax payer bailouts. These people are lucky to have jobs!

Same question to you: How exactly is this taxing profits? The company was LOSING money like crazy and needed tax payer money to avoid going under. Where is the "profit" in that?

While I believe what you said here may be true of the far-left leadership in the Dem Party, I tend to give the regular folks the benefit of the doubt that when they see the lies as clear as these are, they too will be deeply annoyed no matter the stripe of the liar(s) involved.

Then you have not been here long enough to see Jillian and the other Liberals routinely cover for every lie that is spoken by the left. Or dismiss it as unimportant. All the while decrying supposed lies by the right.

they will be taxed on their income that they recieved from us.

Its perfectly legal and doing it the other way was not.

Taxing them at 90% is just wrong. It shows how easily the government can change the rules if they want to. Both sides are wrong in this mess.

How are "both sides" wrong? Repubs were left totally out of the AIG bailout process.

Now, if you're talking about House members who voted 'yea' on this targeted, punitive, unconstitutional taxation, yeah I agree.

How are "both sides" wrong? Repubs were left totally out of the AIG bailout process.

Now, if you're talking about House members who voted 'yea' on this targeted, punitive, unconstitutional taxation, yeah I agree.

that isn't correct giethner created a loan program of 40 bil prior to tarp i under bush then tarp i was passed under bush and they got 165 bill.....

that isn't correct giethner created a loan program of 40 bil prior to tarp i under bush then tarp i was passed under bush and they got 165 bill.....

Seems to me that as galling as it is that Chris Dodd and Tim Geithner will get fingers shaken at them but otherwise get a pass. . . .

And as galling as it is that it is now clear that President Obama, or at least his top advisors, knew this was going to happen some time ago. . . .

And as galling as it is that all those executives who ran AIG into the ground will be rewarded with millions and millions of dollars for doing that. . . .

There is a larger issue at stake here that should strike fear into the heart of every American patriot.

That issue is that our Congress is presuming to target a specific group for punative taxes, and given the great groundswell of anger out there, probably most taxpayers won't care. But such a move by our government will put all of us at risk. Let a precedent be set for that without challenge and none of us will be safe. A increasingly power drunk leadership from the head down might just exercise additional disciplines as they see fit. And that puts us on a slippery slope that every principle in our Constitution was intended to avoid and could leave us all unprotected and vulnerable.

They can't do this. And we can't allow it.

Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve bank of NY at that time. None of THIS bonus money was handed out under those plans. THIS one is the Dem's baby all the way. They themselves even admit that. None of them is blaming Bush. I'll at least give them credit for that. This is theirs. They own it.

Inside AIG-FP, Feeling the Public's Wrath
By Brady Dennis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 19, 2009; C01

WILTON, Conn., March 18 -- A solitary flat-screen television hangs on the back wall of the trading floor inside the headquarters of AIG Financial Products here. Wednesday afternoon, the most-talked-about employees in America huddled around it to find out just how despised they have become.

They watched quietly as members of Congress referred to them as greedy and incompetent. They heard more than one demand that their names be released to the seething American public. They heard the chairman of American International Group, Edward M. Liddy, tell lawmakers that people, in e-mails sent to AIG-FP, suggested that the firm's leaders "should be executed with piano wire around their necks."

The evening before, the firm's chief operating officer, Gerry Pasciucco -- whom Liddy recruited in November from Morgan Stanley to shut down Financial Products before it could do more harm to the economy -- had gathered them together in the same spot.

Pasciucco urged them to keep their heads down, to act professionally and to continue working to extricate Financial Products from its more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding derivative contracts. He acknowledged that the past few days have been like being "inside the piñata."

In reply, they told him that they worried mostly about getting shot, despite the guards now patrolling the parking lot, the front door and some of their homes.

A sense of fear hung in the room -- the palpable, unsettling kind that flashes across people's eyes. But there was anger, too. No one would express it publicly, of course. Who wants to hear a wealthy financier complain? And yet, within those walls off Danbury Road lies a deep sense of betrayal -- first by their former colleagues, now by their elected leaders.

The handful of souls who championed the firm's now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president.

"They've chosen to throw us under the bus," said a Financial Products executive, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. "They have vilified us."

They say what is missing from this week's hysteria is perspective. The very handsome retention payments they received over the past week were set in motion early last year when the firm's former president, Joe Cassano, was on his way out the door. Financial Products was already running into trouble on its risky credit bets, and the year ahead looked grim. People were weighing offers from other firms, and AIG executives feared that too many departures could lead to disaster....


....The Financial Products staff met twice Wednesday inside one of the firm's large, glass-walled conference rooms to discuss the boss's letter. Numerous employees indicated that they would be willing to return the money, but most wanted nothing more to do with the firm. It was a preview of the possible exodus to come, one that concerns Liddy himself.

"My fear is that the damage is done," he told a congressional subcommittee. "That they will return [the money], but that they will return it with their resignations."

There is little doubt within Financial Products that he's right about that.

"Nobody is going to give it back and then stay," said one of the firm's employees. "If they give back the money, then they will walk. And they will walk into the arms of AIG's counterparties."

In the meantime, the e-mails from the public have continued to roll in, including death threats and calls to blow up the firm's Wilton headquarters. Reporters and photographers have camped out in front of the offices in London and Connecticut. They have staked out employees' houses. The New York Post identified one executive and labeled him "Jackpot Jimmy." Another employee had to relocate his family after a London tabloid printed his address. A protest group is organizing an "AIG magical mystery tour" Saturday, loading up a 47-seat bus to stop at Financial Products and at the homes of some of its executives.

the new ceo hired by the government, the same government that intial approved these same bonus payments said they were retention payments which means it was for the people they wanted to keep to fix this mess......did it ever dawn on you all that these may be the folks that stoped it from completly imploding and from it being worse than it was and were going to fix it......if i were them i would give it back and resign....fix it yourself.....