TARP inspector general says Bush administration specifically considered and approved AIG bonuses.
TARP inspector general says Bush administration specifically considered and approved AIG bonuses.
Bloomberg News reports that Neil Barofsky, inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), told the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee today that the Bush administration “specifically contemplated” paying bonuses to AIG employees in its November agreement to provide federal bailout funds to the failing insurance giant:
The TARP contract between AIG and Treasury “specifically contemplated the payment of bonuses and retention payments to AIG employees, including AIG’s senior partners,” Barofsky said.
Yesterday, AIG CEO Edward Liddy testified that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke approved these bonuses, saying that Federal Reserve representatives attend AIG’s “various meetings on strategy and they have the ability to weigh in — either yea or nay — on anything that we decide.”
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The TARP contract between AIG and Treasury “specifically contemplated the payment of bonuses and retention payments to AIG employees, including AIG’s senior partners,” Barofsky said.
It was buried there in the three pages that Paulson presented to Congress. Remember?
March 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pmThe Bush Administration: the gift that keeps on giving! and giving and giving!
March 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm.
Expect the “Dodd did it” cheerleaders to flood this thread with their definitive proof to discredit Neil Barofsky…
.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:12 pmNot surprised. Not at all.
The only part that does surprise me is that BushCo didn’t make sure the bonuses would be tax free.
PEACE
March 19th, 2009 at 2:13 pmSomeone needs to be more precise. The Federal Reserve isn’t the government and AIG is 80% owned by taxpayers. Did the Treasury run money through the Fed, to get Bernanke as the approver or disapprover of incentive bonuses?
Important details needed. But on the surface it reeks.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pmif people are really angry, get Congress including the GOPs to pass a comprehensive exec compensation law: limit top exec salary and bonus, let shareholders vote on it, tie it to performance, make it fair!
exec compensation has risen exponentially in the last 10 years. where is the outrage with exxon’s ceo making $400m a year? with wall street paying $18B of bonus last year? will merrill lynch billions of bonus before merging with BofA?
get real, people. aig is just window dressing.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pmIt should come as no revelation that the Village Idiot’s administration approved the bonuses for fellow republicans at AIG–what the hell else is new? The issue is why didn’t the Obama administration exercise more care and stop payment of the bonuses as soon as they were able to?
March 19th, 2009 at 2:23 pm$700 billion, + “trust me” oversight = massive rip-off of the American taxpayer by the wealthy elite.
Ye$, Republican$ are the party of value$.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:28 pmJoeBridgeman Says:
get real, people. aig is just window dressing.
There is a LOT going on in the world, and just here in the states. But that is not a sound argument to ignore something that is agreed to be wrong. This issue is taking up too much mainstream dialogue, but that does not make it complete fluff.
And it is necessary to set precedents in matters like this.
This AIG issue is the most recognized right now by the public, and therefore it is a target that has popular support coupled with outrage.
If the corporate world thinks that this is a useful distraction that will deflect any consequential results in other corporate venues, they may find themselves mistaken.
The handling of AIG may become a model by which other corporations can be handled.
If it is a shell game, then the game is more subtle than it appears.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:32 pmI think too many folks are staring at the hole and taking their eye off the donut here. The AIG bonuses — no matter who knew what when and who “approved” — aren’t the issue here. Frankly, I am willing to believe that they were valid retention bonuses and, in a meaningful way, enabled the company to reduce its risk exposure from $2.6 to 1.6 trillion over the past six months as Liddy suggested in yesterday’s testimony.
The real issue here predates Liddy and should be laid squarely at the feet of AIG’s previous CEO as well as Joe Cassano. These are the “villains” in this morality play.
Meanwhile, let the neo-Hooverite, neo-populists like Little Johnny Boehner, Ferret Cantor, Chinless Mitch, et. al., climb out on the “tax 100 percent of the bonuses” limb and then cut it off behind them. They are trying to gain traction on this issue (after they resisted the notion of salary caps in the original bail-out legislation) and make a political statement. Let them go ahead and try. They and their empty-suit moron, GDumbya, are the ones who created this mess in the first place.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:35 pmThis whole thing is really pissing me off. Pass a law taxing at 90% all bonuses to all companies accepting any government aid, and don’t be this stupid again in any future bailout agreements. Stop the committee meetings, the press briefings, just stop wasting more money on generating hot air.
Congress needs to get on to the next order of business. This is really small stuff compared to the total amount of money being printed and thrown down the throat of these greedy bastards and their shitty companies.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:51 pmProving once again that the democrat party has their head up their ass when it comes to framing the debate.
Agreed, all the Democrats have is facts on their side- Republican’s are the still obsessed with framing… but when your debate is so devoid of concept, color or composition is it any wonder that the Republicans are forced to pay so much attention to the frame?
March 19th, 2009 at 2:52 pmWhy didn’t Barry, Barney and the rest fly into righteous indignation then?
I wonder.
We democrats leave Boehnerization to the experts.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pmYour post makes no sense and neither do you.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:12 pm“TARP inspector general says Bush administration specifically considered and approved AIG bonuses.”
Enough said. The media and The Party of No got their pitchforks too fast to attack Geithner and Bernanke when they didn’t focus on the Paulson-Bush Administration. The media and The Party of No are simply trying to tie the Obama Administration to the decision making by Congress last year to give TARP money to Wall Street when the bailout of AIG and the decision making of AIG bonuses was not under Obama’s watch.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:19 pmOn a related note, I can’t help wondering if there weren’t better people than Geithner to do this job.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:23 pmbarfly,
March 19th, 2009 at 3:24 pmLOL…
… The Boehenality known as Klatu.
On a news site it said that 13 of these companies owed back taxes over 200 million. That’s bad enough, but a report came out last year that said in a screening of overseas companies, they found that just in 2005, nearly none of them had paid their taxes here. And no one has bothered to collect from them.
And remember the S&L bailout from us? It was more than 4.2 Trillion. And we never got that money back either. Does anyone remember that McCain was involved seriously in that? And he nearly lost his senate seat. And one of the Bush’s had a failed S&L, Neil Bush it was. The same Bush that was in charge of security in the twin towers. The grandson of a Bush who was doing business in Germany 9 months after war was declared. The same family who then had property confiscated by the US government for war profiteering.
These people have no morals. And the people who do business here that are allowed to snub their noses by not paying taxes.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:45 pmIt is all the same link. It is the reason business being done in this country needs an overhaul from the ground up.
Isn’t it obvious, rhf? The stupid trolls LIKE getting screwed by GOoPers. It’s like battered wife syndrome. As long as their masters abuse them, they feel like the center of attention.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:49 pmDon’t know how you could legislate a limit to how much money someone is paid. But you don’t need to. The govt can tax everything over, say $3,000,000 at 90% and everything over $5,000,000 at 95%. If that doesn’t work, jack up the %. Make sure derivative traders pay is not consider “capital gains” but just to be safe, make the cap gains rates for over a few million dollars up in the 90% range, too. The resulting govt revenue or reinvestment of the obscene incomes into the business instead of into a few peoples’ bank accounts would be a big boost to the economy.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pmKlatu burps:Why didn’t Barry, Barney and the rest fly into righteous indignation then?
Because hysterical ranting is your side’s thang.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:23 pmEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 19th, 2009 at 6:03 pmAnother gift from the Criminal Bush. Don’t let the RepubliCons confuse the issue, they are to blame. Until the RepubliCons are voted out; they will continue to commit lies, fraud, and theft.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:27 pmI don’t know if anyone in this thread has done so already (too busy to look through everyone’s comments and watch the NCAA tourney at the same time!) but as a matter of strict accurate reporting, it was AIG’s Liddy who said under oath yesterday that Bernanke/Bush administration approved AIG bonuses and retention payments, not the TARP inspector. Barofsky only stated that Bush’s Treasury team and AIG “contemplated” giving or keeping in place bonuses to AIG workers back in November.
I’ve already criticized Dodd, the Treasury department now and under Paulson on other threads, but now everyone should be directing blame at Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve for not saying no to these bonuses during AIG bailout negotiations. There would have been no need for Senate amendments like Dodd’s, Wyden/Snowe’s to the stimulus had Bernanke put his foot down last Fall.
But Geithner was also involved, along with Bernanke in these very AIG bailout talks. Did he know or have an opinion on these “contemplated” bonus payments way back then? I don’t know but he needs to be more honest about what he knew and when he knew it regarding bonus money contracts for bailout recipients – not just AIG’s. It just doesn’t pass the smell test that he only knew about specific ones like AIG only a week or two ago. But like I said, Bernanke needs to take a lot of heat for this now in the media.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:17 pmLMAO. So rather than just acknowledging what has actually occurred at the behest of this administration, you’re talking about what the former administration “specifically contemplated” ?
And here I was thinking that simply ignoring this for days was dishonest. The depths you’ll go to avoid any principled criticism of this administration.
ThinkFoxNews.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:34 amYes, don’t let them confuse the issue of a Democrat lawmaker being forced by a Democrat administration to protect these bonuses, with their dirty trickery of pointing to any non-biased news source on the planet reporting that.
It’s all lies and smears and whatever else you want to invent so you won’t have to make a single inconsequential criticism of this administration.
Man, you guys really took that torch from RedState and ran with it didn’t you.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:38 am