Liddy, AIG, hypocrisy and greed!

Here's the latest from BuzzFlash (in case you missed it):

When Edward Liddy, now the chief honcho at A.I.G., headed up Allstate Insurance, he had no qualms about firing 6,000 agents. What contracts? Who gives a damn about contracts?

Because Liddy has done a 180 and now cries that A.I.G. contracts are sacred, even though these "A.I.G. Execs ... Led American Into Losing Hundreds of Billions of Dollars" ...

"Liddy is the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week ... for this and so much more. He even called these 'retention' bonuses at A.I.G..., even though 11 of the multi-millionaire execs had already left the company. A.I.G. and Liddy exemplify the Reagan/Bush era of no responsibility for one's actions as long as one swears an oath to greed."


But there's more...unbelievably!

"A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments." Yup. A.I.G. "is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens."

A.I.G. is using taxpayer money in their suit.

The IRS denied A.I.G.'s initial claim last year.

The surreal world of AIG

Edward M. Liddy is not to blame for AIG's pernicious affairs, but as CEO, he's gonna catch some hell when he sits down today before Congress to try to defend the multi-million dollar bonuses AIG paid out with taxpayer dollars.

AIG, like so many of its counterparts, lives in a surreal world that most of us cannot even begin to comprehend; not in our wildest dreams. It isn't any wonder that the people running such companies have no clue as to life in the real world.

AIG is so big and so convoluted and so intertwined and enmeshed in our financial system, that it simply could not be allowed to go under. Joe's Repair Shop, on the other hand, really doesn't matter, and when the Republicans were in charge they made it almost impossible for Joe to get out from under his crushing debt, while at the same time they cut taxes for the folks running AIG and similar examples of capitalism run amok.

Thus, AIG got $170 billion of your dollars and mine to stay afloat. There were no controls put on that money and no oversight. So, the first thing these corporate criminals did was spend $90 billion of those funds to "pay out to foreign and domestic banks, including some that had multibillion-dollar U.S. government bailouts of their own."

The second thing they did was spend $200 million in bonuses to the nogoodniks who created the mess in the first place. That's not a very big piece of the $170 BILLION pie, but as someone once said, "It's the principle of the thing."

Furthermore, when one steps down from the cloud of high finance, one is faced with the fact the the huge majority of people in this country will never come close to seeing $1 million dollars. With AIG, we're talking about BONUSES. They already got their regular pay!


What Liddy is going to tell Congress today is that AIG had no choice, that the bonuses were contractual obligations.

Congress, I hope, will laugh in his face and say "Return the goddamn money or we're gonna run all your asses in jail for defrauding the United States of America."

Congress won't do that, of course. But members of the august body are pissed, so there will be repercussions.

And isn't it interesting that corporations routinely use financial distress as a means of breaking or dismantling union contracts, but when executives are involved, contracts are sacrosant?


When the ship is sinking because the ones in charge of keeping it afloat failed to do their job, one does not pay them extra money merely because contracts were signed back when everything seemed to be hunky-dory!

Some Congressional types want to place an extra income tax of say 35% on all bonuses over $50,000. That's funny. Millions of people in our country don't make close to $50K in one year!

I'd say stop screwing around. Tell AIG and its executives, "Return the money now or go to jail for fraud."

The other alternative of course, is to put Cheney back in the While House and have him run a covert "Executive Assassination" squad like he did under Chimpy.