Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:32:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Gilbert Lawrence <[email protected]>
1. Edward Liddy was appointed by Poulson under President Bust last fall 2. 2. The first tranche of the bailout money was handed over to AIG on November 17, 2008 and the second tranche on Nov 26, 2008?under President Bush and when Republicans controlled the Senate.? Mario responds: This is known as a half-truth. This is like those who blame President Bush for the 2001 recession and 9/11 which only makes sense to those critics and is nonsense to everyone else. To begin with, while Henry Paulson was the Treasury Secretary when Liddy was appointed Chairman of AIG, the AIG bailout was being handled by Tim Geithner who was Chairman of the NY Fed at the time, and is now Obama's Treasury Secretary. Thus Geithner's relationship with AIG and the bailout started under the Bush presidency and continued unbroken into the Obama-teleprompter presidency, so he was deeply involved throughout. This included the bailout money provided to AIG, which was provided after President Obama and his teleprompter were elected and Bush made sure he was briefed in all the major deliberations going on. Gilbert wrote: 3. When I suggested capping bonus, on goanet, our beloved birthday-boy himself berated me. He claimed compensation was a private enterprise way to compensate smart people. That these are contractual obligatins between parties. He suggested that this suprulo goenkar (moi) would not understand these high finance workings. Mario responds: The so-called "suprulo goenkar (moi)" still doesn't seem to understand finance, leave alone high finance, or the purpose of bonuses which, to be fair to Gilbert's lask of knowledge, are not something one would expect a physician to understan. When bonuses are paid as a percentage of the value created by a person's performance in adding measurable value, capping them makes no sense unless one wants to cap the person's performance. Most of the AIG bonuses were not performance bonuses, but retention bonuses, which make no sense to me. Contracts are the very foundation of a civilized society. Legal contracts cannot be broken, even by the government, though they can be re-negotiated with the express acceptance by both parties. This is what the seemingly overwhelmed Tim Geithner, who could not even do his own taxes correctly, should have done before the bailout money was paid out, and which is why Congress is asking for the bonuses to be voluntarily returned or trying to tax these bonuses because they cannot legally break the contracts. Secondly, I have explained my position on the bonuses in my following post: http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-March/175441.html Gilbert wrote: As far as blaming Dodd, please see: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/index.html? Mario responds: Leave it to Gilbert to find and defend the biggest culprit in the AIG bonus fiasco. When will Gilbert learn that his primary sources of information, The Huffington Post and Salon, are far left wing blogs with very little credibility which specialize in the same familiar half-truths we see from Gilbert. Unfortunately, the sordid facts cut through Gilbert's and Senator Dodd's feeble excuses and protestations. Here is a far more credible source from Senator Dodd's home state that also exposes Gilbert's poppycock atttempt to defend the Senator: http://www.courant.com/business/hc-aig-dodd-bonus-0319.artmar19,0,2281311.story Excerpt: U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, already reeling in public opinion polls, suffered another political blow Wednesday with the admission that he had been involved in key legislative changes that helped pave the way for AIG to pay controversial bonuses to its employees. In a retreat from earlier statements, Dodd said Wednesday that U.S. Treasury Department officials had approached him last month, urging him to modify an amendment to the federal stimulus bill that capped bonuses for executives at companies receiving aid. [end of excerpt] After all the tap dancing is over, Senator Dodd accepted the changes to his original wording, apparently at the request of Tim Geithner, and SIGNED THE BILL with the provision shown above. Now he's claiming that "someone" changed his wording but he doesn't know whom. Oh, really? Well, Senator Dodd, perhaps the next time you will read a bill before signing it, especially parts YOU inserted to make sure no mythical goblin or gremlin has changed it. Gilbert wrote: "Please keep this in mind, Young Francis, or risk embarrassing yourself in front of people who know.? In front of your friends, its up to you:-))" Birthday Boy. Mario responds: I think it is futile to ask Gilbert to stop embarrassing himself on matters of finance and economics:-))
