House AIG Hearing begins. Waiting for Liddy. UPDATE: Liddy is live...Open thread
By John Amato Wednesday Mar 18, 2009 9:05am(Liddy mesmerizes Larry King)
UPDATE: Liddy is speaking to the HOUSE now.
The House has started their AIG hearing this morning, but we are waiting for the Big Kahuna, head of AIG, Edward Liddy. He's a typical right wing disaster capitalist, who was in business with Rumsfeld in the 80's, destroyed companies, maxed out his campaign contributions to McCain---so in essence---he's the perfect Bush pick.
DWT has more on Liddy's past:
I can't understand why a big Republican donor-- obviously a crook-- like Liddy was put in charge of a company the government basically owns. And it isn't just because he was a maxed-out McCain donor, as well as a contributor to the RNC, that should disqualify him from employment.
He was the chairman of Allstate when they were cheating Hurricane Katrina victims out of their insurance coverage. Before that Liddy was the CFO at a pharmaceutical company where Don Rumsfeld was the CEO.Together they axed most of the employees in order to make it an attractive property for Monsanto, which bought it in 1985 making Rumsfeld and Liddy immensely wealthy (although neither had contributed anything to the value of the company aside from firing 60% of the employees who had built it up.) See Liddy's swell digs on the right. I wonder who vetted Liddy for Bush when he wound up-- including himself, no doubt, among the losers he terms "the best and the brightest"-- as head of AIG in June, 2008.
Talk Left catches Liddy's op-ed in the WaPo.
These idiots at AIG are so insulated in their thinking that they actually thought America would just sit back and not take notice of what they are doing with our money? The public outrage is palpable and Howard Beale's are being born every second. And the Obama administration better keep on top of this too. Very bad communication and political skills have been practiced by the President Obama's economic team on this one and that was stunning to me...
And Chris Dodd is not responsible for these bonuses to be paid out as the right wing press have been pushing lately.
On CNN I just saw them do a segment on the clause on the bonuses and they can't figure out who did put it in.
Rep. Frank wants the names of the people who received the bonuses from AIG, but Liddy played the fear card and said he was worried about their safety and then read two "death threats."
Barney said he understood but would subpoena him for them anyway. Where did he get those? Were they letters, were they emails, comments on blogs or message boards?
Welcome to our world. I've received many death threats just for writing my blog and if he thinks a few unhinged comments will put the brakes on those names, he's sadly mistaken.
Senator Ron Wyden said he could have prevented the bonuses.
On Tuesday that the furor surrounding AIG's bonus payments could have been avoided had the Obama White House and members of Congress simply backed legislation that he and Sen. Olympia Snowe introduced more than a month ago.
--
"The reality is, had that legislation been passed it would have been a very strong disincentive to anybody paying out bonuses in the future," said Wyden. "Earlier, the President had denounced those bonuses that came at the end of the year. And when Senator Snowe and I said it is not enough for those in elected office to say it was wrong, that they have got to have a plan to have them pay it back, we were able to get legislation through the United States Senate. Not a single United States Senator was willing in broad daylight to stand up and oppose our bipartisan amendment... but it died in conference."
Are you feeling any better about AIG after watching Liddy testify on the Hill?
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As if this AIG mess isn't bad enough, it is now headline news that Obama received over $100,000 from AIG when the correct headline should be AIG EMPLOYEES which is not AIG.
Of course, no one their to refute him.
meaning he contributed over $200K to Bush's reelection campaign in 2004.
Of course, not a peep from the MSM about that little factoid....
There is a major push underway -- engineered by Obama's Treasury officials, enabled by a mindless media, and amplified by the right-wing press -- to blame Chris Dodd for the AIG bonus payments. That would be perfectly fine if it were true. But it's completely false, and the scheme to heap the blame on him for the AIG bonus payments is based on demonstrable falsehoods.
There is a price to pay for keeping corporatists employed in government. A HUGE PRICE!
People are now scouring records of who attended those meetings. Dodd's original draft PREVENTED these payouts. Somebody is going to squeal.
even on AC360 last night. My jaw dropped. Cooper said that Obama got the second highest amount of money from AIG out of all politicians.
Here is Amy Goodman with Robert Kuttner and Ralph Nader:
The bonuses represent $1 for of each $1,000 that AIG has been given. The angst over them is the definition of PENNY WISE but POUND FOOLISH.
The AIG financial services unit in London wrote $440 billion worth of Credit Default Swaps, yet the entire Company is worth only $100 billion. It has received $170 billion and the Credit Default Swaps have been honored at face value. There is no way AIG can pay the money back.
Crony Capitalism per se.
The reward for failure should be failure.
Here is Eliot Spitzer.
Here is Michael Hudson.
Here is wallstreetwatch.org/ also see the 'Sold Out' report here.
Here at nakedcapitalism.
Here with Diane Rehm is William Black et al. William Black excerpt here.
so...have they set up the stocks and handed out free fruit in the gallery for his appearance?
But wouldn't that lead to apple stands in the courtroom, with apples on sale for 10 cents each?
Nice suit. Wonder what that cost?
http://www.cspan.org/Watch/C-SPAN3_wm.aspx
CNN is comparing ketchup brands instead...
Chances are that the person who put in the clause that no one knows about will be a Puke. If not a Puke, then a mole. CNN also mentioned that AIG employees are now afraid to go to work. No telling how much sick pay is with this company.
They actually work? Who'da thunk it!
Actually, maybe the company, the financial services industry and the economy would do better if they stayed home.
What "work" do they do anyway?
Actively conspire to rip of American taxpayers?
And they SHOULD be afraid goddammit!
Fuckin thieves!
Speaking of that, from Rush Limbaugh yesterday;
Isn't that something. I guess Rush would know all about
I fuckin HATE Limbaugh...
I wish bad things for him. Very bad things.
Is he going to hold his hand over a candle flame to show how tough he is?
some ruckus? (Stream is breaking up)
You twitter while peeing?
Leaves hands free...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6KBRU-yuwc
The Real AIG Scandal:
http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/
They are using your money to pay back the corrupt bank's gambling losses to keep the corrupt financial system from collapsing.
Eventually, you will get your money back and they will regulate to keep it from happening again.
If the gop ever get power, they will deregulate and crash the economy again.
You can tell this cocksucker was lying through his teeth by the complex answers to King's very simple questions.
This guy Liddy showed no remorse.
No. The cocksuckers are at the opposing table.
Liddy is pissed off because his prostitutes are making him miss his golf date.
most of the business class in this country (and around the world most likely) is made up of sociopaths.
If you give enough power to the government, you will see it gets corrupted and abuses will happen. Same thing happens when you give unrestricted power to business. They are literally holding hostage our whole society, period.
The significance of this bonus shenanigan, IMHO, was not the figure in dollars of the bonuses. But the fact, that it was in no other terms a clear attempt to extort taxpayer money by the AIG execs.
At the end of the day, a well managed company with common sense would have dropped the bonus idea due to the catastrophic PR that it would have generated (likely to offset the dollar figure of the bonuses). At this point, AIG does not need to be well managed (as that is hard work), they can simply extort the tax payer. And they will continue doing so until they are shown who is boss.
Sociopaths are like vermin, they are either at your throat or at your feet (stealing Churchill's quote regarding the Germans). If we don't beat them, they will continue going for out throats....
agree with you more. Most of these guys would choke their grandmothers if it would give them a few extra dollars in income every year. These guys should have never been in the position to be able to hold us hostage, IMHO.
Anyone want to wager on what that final percentage will be from those 73 employees?
living in a cul de sac is kinda like being a quail on a Dick Cheney hunting trip.
Geitner just started breathing again...
...but the dow is down, so there's still hope.
Uhm...The Federal government took over the banks under FDR, genius. It HAS been done before.
people currently speaking!! I don't know who many of these speakers are; apparently you don't either!
They do a pretty good job identifying the actors.
March 18, 2009
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29749994/page/2/
"AIG declined to comment. But a person familiar with the situation said the company did not want to release the names because of privacy issues and also out of concern for the safety of the individuals."
****
according to public record from last year's shareholders' data:
http://investing.businessweek.com/businesswee....
Jay S. Wintrob
Executive Vice President of Retirement Services
ANNUAL COMPENSATION*
Salary $775,000
Bonus $1,742,500
Total Annual Compensation $2,517,500
and there's much, much, much more.
they pretty much *HAVE* to tell us who got paid and how much they got paid.
there's a thread on 4chan right now, anonymous is *going* to extract this data. shitstorm is sure to follow.
Frenkel, Jacob
Bensinger, Steven
Wisner, Frank
Herzog, David
Lewis, Robert
Kaslow, Andrew
Booth, Richard
Schreiber, Brian
Dooley, William
Tse, Edmund
Moor, Kristian
Bollenbach, Stephen
Kelly, Anastasia
Wintrob, Jay
Martin, Rodney
Walsh, Nicholas
Kelley, Kevin
Doyle, John
Feldstein, Martin
Miles, George
Offit, Morris
Sutton, Michael
Langhammer, Fred
Rometty, Virginia
Orr, James
Nora Johnson
Suzanne Neuger
THIS is bread and circuses.
Ooooh...the OUTRAGE...the OUTRAGE I TELL YA. Everybody SHOCKED...SHOCKED!!
Mr Libby...oooh...he's feeling our pain!!
But...nothing done. No arrests. No investigations. No one jailed.
Just the typical, distract the masses, public circle jerk, and then back to business.
I didn't realize Liddy took over in September.
He's talked about the different divisions of AIG, and given an idea of how much each division owes.
He differentiated the performance and retention bonuses.
He talked about the plan to pay back the money AIG has received (Fed reserve first, TARP money second).
He agreed that there should be better, more direct communication with the Congress.
I'm nnot believing, on it's face, everything Liddy is saying, but to prove or disprove his points, you should know what he's talking about.
I worked there for 10 years in Finance for the HOLDING company. When it was a REAL company.
This putz has been there for what? Four months?
He doesn't know DICK about that company. AIG's large insurance subsidiaries would be Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies on their OWN.
Is that possible in the short term, or are those individual components too intertwined to be split up right now?
I've gotta figure that in the long term, it's probably the best way to make sure it doesn't become "too big to fail" again.
the company has NEGATIVE net worth.
The cost of it's counterparty exposure exceeds the value of it's assets. It's DONE. FINISHED.
THERE IS NO COMPANY.
Are there divisions of AIG that, if separated from the rest of the company, would be profitable on their own? And, if so, is it feasible to split them off from the rest of the company in the near future?
then the answer lies in the underlying books of business.
Due diligence is done by a potential buyer to see if a business is viable and then a price is agreed to.
It's called negotiation.
How do you define "near future"?
Can the businesses be unwound. Ask Mr. Liddy...he's the fucking genius that knows everything about this company.
If you're asking is the sum of the parts worth more than the whole...I've answered your question above. They would need to be analyzed.
Lehman went under, because the asshats in management refused to accept deals for various assets that valued those assets at less than dollar for dollar.
Obviously, they clearly didn't understand that they were not sitting on a pile of gold...but a pile of shit.
Here is Margaret Popper of Bloomberg from Feb 21, '09 in an analysis and discussion with NY Insurance
Superintendent Eric Dinallo who is charged with the oversight of AIG.
He categorically states that AIGs losses are from Credit Default Swaps. Their Financial Services Unit is
essentially a hedge fund that ran amok.
He says that AIG's primary units suffered no losses.
at least if Liddy tea bagged the questioners, it would make for interesting television.
forgive me for being a sort of "devil's advocate" about this issue......while I too am outraged at the chutzpah of these AIG folks, the bonuses amount to 1% of the bailout package, right?
Isn't 1% the same amount of the stimulus package that Republicans were (are) bellyaching about as being "pork"??...I mean, they're OK with the other 99% but calling the rest of us "Socialists" over the 1%.
Kinda like screaming and storming out of the Dollar Store because the thing you want costs $1.01.
All that said, however, the radical in me is hollering "hang the bastards"!!
I was outraged about the concept of paying off foreclosures, and I'm outraged about this.
to take Mr. Santelli's rant and turn it around - how about we get a referendum here, and see how many people want to pay off, the losers' bonuses, instead of maybe letting them get fired, so that the rest of us with some fucking principles, can maybe swoop in and take those jobs?
its the principle of the damn thing. and you're god damn right I'm the kind of guy who would hold up the line and hold up business if the Dollar Tree tried charging me $1.01 for an item.
it's the lack of any semblance of fairness.
For withholding what they knew about the retention bonuses.
...when they structured bonuses even as they faced major losses.
Also pointed out that if AIG had gone into receivership, those retention bonuses would not be paid.
their bonuses for staying with the company long enough to finish their contracts, all the while seeing that the ship is still going to sink?
And 22-24 people are, basically responsible for $1.6T worth of business, per Liddy?
Yes, they were given bonuses to close out the contracts- contracts that cost AIG a lot of $$- and then left. Now I'm with you, in as much as I think those people owed their work, free of bonuses, before they left- if they were the people who actually got AIG into trouble in the first place.
As for the ship sinking...There's a reason it's referred to as a bailout, no? IF Liddy is correct, and the company is righted, the government and the Fed get the loans back, then makes a profit when it sells off its 80% share in the company.
At risk of putting the cart before the horse...I don't think the company will be sold off whole, though. It will be broken down to it's components, then sold off. That, accompanied by strict regulations, would, hopefully, prevent a mess like this from happening again.
Hopefully sold off at a nice profit for the tax payer.
"Very bad communication and political skills have been practiced by the President Obama's economic team on this one"
I think it goes a little beyond that -- Tim Geitner totally takes his orders from the Wall Street big shots. Definitely not Change I Can Believe In.
In addition, the "outraged" posturing on the part of many in congress strikes me as hollow jumping-on-the-bandwagon.
That guy's name is Lynch?
Proper job club. He is totally spanking mr aig ceo dude.
"Look...I'm a contract attorney..."
Give him more time...
I'm not so sure that wasn't like trying to talk fungo with a martian.
How in the h*ll do people expect the NEW administration to do everything at once??? It has been less than 3 "short" months since they took over and people expect them to know EVERYTHING that has been going on??? The PREVIOUS administration probably had all the knowledge on this and they did nothing except probably cash some HUGE checks. Folks, you can't possibly blame what's going on on the new administration. They just rode into town remember?
sounded like had McPalin been
electedinstalled...There wouldn't have been any hearings.
Time to side up for kickball!
so I can pay my share of AIG bonuses...
Daaaah dah daaaaaaaaaaaaah!
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/...
organization.
Billo'beck will tell me so tonight.
It's that RED cross that gives it away...
...when AIG came up with bonus plan- in the face of mounting losses- over a year ago.
Liddy again talking about AIG's request that 50% of bonuses be returned.
...in quashing disclosure.
She's questioning why the US government, by bailing out AIG- and thus banking systems of France and Germany- is alone in this: where's the help from those countries.
Liddy just stated that the goal is to split up AIG once the company makes good on its debts.
from his tone in being able to recoup AIG's loss. But at least I'm no floor trader.
He's been saying all afternoon that there's a dependence on the market.
In his answer to Thad McCotter(R, MI), he explained that AIG has worthy assets to sell, but because companies that would like to purchase those assets are so strapped for cash, getting rid of the assets at firesale prices would end up hurting more than helping.
They've shaved the debts down from $2.7Trillion to $1.6Trillion, so you've gotta figure that those parts of AIG that are doing well are paying off the larger company's debt. So I can kinda see why they'd hold on to those parts until selling them would bring in more than using them....If ya follow.
america has become the [weekend at bernies two, sequell] he he drag that dead corpse around bros!
bonuses purposely to protect the President? Does the discussion of the bonuses only between AIG and the Fed seem like what would be SOP?
I think that's what Liddy said in earlier testimony (first session).
...based on what I know about Liddy- which is little up until the last few days- he took on a tough job that's made him a whipping boy for public outrage for $1/year. IF he manages to pull this out of the fire, pay off the debts to the Fed and the government, and turns a profit for the government when it sells off its 80% share of AIG, he should be remembered as a really good guy.
The guy has taken a lot of heat today from a large panel, and hasn't had to whisper to a single lawyer or had any real Alberto "I don't recall" moments.
Office of Thrift Supervision, the agency that Bushco used to trump then-NY AG Elliot Spitzer's attempt to regulate the derivatives market.
Kinda wish she would have contnued, but I'm not so sure it wouldn't be straying off topic in this particular hearing.
By security I mean bodyguards.
Like a true Bush crony, Ed Liddy has an answer for everything. Every argument trumps the absurdity of the previous one. His strategy is to play rope-a-dope with Congress in the hopes of wearing them out.
It's not gonna work this time.
Ironically, these death threats have been fomented by Liddy's ideological brethren in Congress, over the airwaves, thru the blogosphere, etc.
-AF
...but the guy came out of retirement in September to pull AIG off the rocks, and he's making a buck a year. And his plan is to break up AIG and to make money for the government- above and beyond what the company has received in loans- as the government sells off its share in the company.
He didn't write the bonus plans- those were in place for months before Liddy took over. Hell, I understand his reasoning for sticking with those retention bonuses, even if I think that the people who received them should pay them back, especially if they were the same people who made the bad derivatives deals in the first place. But I think threats aimed at Liddy over this are just plain thoughtless.
He's a company man -- and that company is GOLDMAN SACHS.
Does everyone have amnesia? In September, the god-damned Republicans wouldn't let Bush's bailout pass without concessions to execs about compensation/bonuses. Case closed. Thank the Republicans for this clusterfuck!
I never thought I'd have cause to use this line (usually reserved for racist characters in movies) but I'm repurposing it for traitorous Executives: "Shoot all these mother-fuckers and let God sort 'em out."
Ninety percent of the time, any clusterfuck can be traced directly back to the GOP.
There’s an important aspect of this AIG mess that is getting no in-depth assessment. Of course, the $165 million in bonuses is an outrage. But at the risk of agreeing with CNBC’s Rick Santelli, it’s pretty small potatoes compared to the 60 plus billion paid out to AIG counterparties (so far) to respond to “liquidity” issues on previously uncollateralized credit default swaps and securities insurance. So, do you think the following is fishy enough for the MSM or Congress to actually investigate?
Henry Paulson, a former chairman of GOLDMAN-SACHS gets appointed to be Treasury Secretary. His former firm has billions of dollars in counterparty contracts with AIG. AIG suffers a 95% stock price drop on September 16, 2008.
On the next day and with no oversight whatsoever, the Treasury Department gives AIG an $85 billion loan in exchange for 80% of the company. On September 18, AIG appoints Edward Liddy, a director of GOLDMAN SACHS, to be chairman and CEO of the now government-owned AIG.
http://people.forbes.com/profile/edward-m-lid...
http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/press/p...
On October 6, 2008, Paulson appoints former GOLDMAN SACHS vice president Neel Kashkari to head the Office of Financial Stability. By early November 2008 TARP funds are supplementing the pre-TARP AIG bailout. Kashari is still on the job.
After much resistance, we come to find out that $12.6 billion in payouts to counterparties went to GOLDMAN SACHS, which received the most taxpayer money of any counterparty.
With blood flowing all over the trading floor, GOLDMAN SACHS manages to report $2.32 billion in net earnings for 2008. http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/press/p...
If some of this sounds familiar, you might be recalling a bailout of Mexico in 1995 under Treasury Secretary (and former GOLDMAN SACHS co-chairman) Robert Rubin. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?re...
The money loaned to Mexico went to pay that country’s creditors – including, very prominently, GOLDMAN SACHS.
So maybe this is all on the up and up, all just a product of the same big players on the same big stage. But maybe not. And it seems that the MSM and Congress completely gloss over these connections. If there are no “shenanigans” going on here (the current euphemism for financial fraud and mismanagement) then there should be straightforward answers to the following questions:
1. What criteria did AIG claim to use to determine which counterparties would be paid, in what order, and how much?
2. How were these criteria actually applied with respect to GOLDMAN SACHS’ positions with AIG?
3. What percentage of GOLDMAN SACHS' positions were paid out compared to the percentage of other counterparties?
4. How will GOLDMAN SACHS’s positions with AIG be paid out going forward?
I'm spreading the word but not holding my breath. . . .
For the little any of us know about what is real here. First just read that this Bush kisser was just appointed to head of AIG two months ago, during the Obama administration? Also, only heard this once, and all the bonuses were discussed and nothing said about them in the last dole out to AIG, under the Obama administration, nothing said until the unwashed masses found out that is, who leaked it? Nothing is mentioned in this article about either of these choice tid bits. Nothing is mentioned either that laws to keep this type of stuff from happening was supposed to have been enacted in what the 1930's under FDR, unless all intellectual reporters think that every President is responsible for every contract signed by every business. Bush did his share of wrong, but keep an open mind, the government, both parties did this, this is a system break down, and could happen to either party or President. Obama probably didn't sit in on the meetings with AIG only recieved high lights from his reps, so the bonuses I can't blame him for, Liddy being there I can, the United States government is the owner of AIG at least 80% of it, and 80% says any body they want can be hired or fired in there. As long as the media keeps us as a people focused on one person, Bush, the problem is like a snake in the grass, unless it is removed it will bite again.
Just read it again, it was Senator Dodd, according to CNN.Com that sat in on the meetings and the Obama administration was afraid of lawsuits if they did not pay the bonuses. So if they knew and are now acting so righteous, and Bush is still being blamed, confusing ain't it. Is this kind of misdirection play, Obama knew let it go now is out raged, gonna sell a lot of books when he gets out, the title will be IF I REALLY SCREWED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THIS IS THE WAY I WOULD HAVE DONE IT, OJ will be proud.
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