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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Retention Bonuses

First of all the salutation is wrong. There is nothing "honorable" about Barney Frank but that's a story for another day.

Secondly, why does Cuomo have to inform Frank whats going on? Isn't it Frank's job to know! After all, he is the chairman of the House Financial Committee, which oversees the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries.

(Click right corner to make larger)

NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Letter to Rep. Barney Frank NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Letter to Rep. Barney Frank



Liddy (CEO) said they had to pay a "retention" bonus to keep the best and brightest people with the company. Out of 73, 11 have already left the company. One guy who has already left according to Cuomo got 4.6 million! (By the way, these were the same people that invested in credit default swaps and CDO's, something that Warren Buffet said, "Was the black hole of investments." )

This is the same kind of toxic crap that brought Lehman Brothers down. Speaking of Lehman Brothers, they are done, gone, and have no one to blame but themselves. They were in existence for 150 years. Now they're gone. No one cares. The sky didn't come crashing down. It didn't cost billions in taxpayer dollars. Why? Because the free market system works!

The bottom line on AIG comes down to a multiple choice. Select A or B.


Sept 2008
A. AIG a major player once worth billions goes belly up because of greed and poor business decisions. Thousands loose their jobs.

Sept 2009
B. After the US taxpayer paid approximately $180 billion, AIG a major player once worth billions goes belly up because of greed and poor business decisions. Thousands loose their jobs.



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Monday, March 16, 2009

For Once... We Agree (with reservations)


American Tax Dollars At Work




AIG Bombshells: $1.2B in Bonuses, Over $100B Paid to Goldman, Other Banks

Posted Mar 16, 2009 11:34am EDT by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Banking

Updated from 11:34 a.m. ET

Update: President Obama has instructed Tim Geithner to "pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses" planned for AIG executive. It's "hard to warrant any bonuses" at AIG and there is no way to "justify this outrage," the President said midday at the White House. After tripping over his words at one point, the President said, "I am choked up with anger," a familiar feeling in America today.

Earlier: Every time AIG is in the news, it's almost guaranteed to provoke a gag reaction from American taxpayers and policymakers. This weekend was no different as two stories of bailout abuse and outrageous behavior came to light:

First, AIG was lambasted as disclosures of its $1.2 billion bonus pool came to light. About $450 million of the bonuses were planned for employees of its financial services unit, the rogue hedge fund insider the insurer, which lost $40.5 billion later year. The Wall Street Journal reports at least seven individuals at that unit were due bonus payments of $3 million each.

AIG CEO Edward Liddy says "the firm's hands are tied" because those bonus payments are "contractual commitments"; apparently, both he and regulators fear the fallout of trying to abrogate contracts, which may be legally binding but were signed before AIG became a ward of the state.

Second, in part to quell the outrage over the bonus revelations - which apparently only came to light because a $165 million payment was due on Sunday - AIG released the names of its counterparties who, thus far, have received at least $90 billion of the $173 billion of government funds the firm has received in what amounts to a backdoor bailout of Wall Street firms, banks and foreign institutions. (Reports vary but Bloomberg says the counterparties got $105 billion of AIG bailout funds.)

Along with Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and Citigroup, the prime beneficiaries of the AIG bailout bonanza include European banking giants Societe Generale, Deustche Bank and Barclays.

But at $12.9 billion to date, Goldman Sachs is at the top of the list AIG bailout beneficiaries. This only reinforces the perception the AIG bailout was really a bailout of Hank Paulson's former firm. And, by the way, AIG's Liddy had to resign from Goldman's board in order to take the AIG job last fall.

Are you outraged yet? The good news is you're not alone: Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, NY Fed President (and ex-Goldman economist) William Dudley, Rep. Barney Frank, Sen. Bob Corker and others have each expressed anger and outrage over the AIG bonuses and payments to counterparties.

The real question is what they, and President Barack Obama, are going to do about it? The really scary thing is there's no end in sight to these AIG outrages, unless we make a major change of course - pronto.

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AIG and Bernie Madoff are the same. Only difference is AIG's not trying to cover it up.

How could anyone in their right mind think they should be rewarded for driving a once prosperous company into the ground???

How many more outrageous events have to occur at AIG before Edward Lilly is fired?

Like I said time and time again who is watching where the money is going. Would they even be getting a bonus if suckers like us didn't give them billions?

Everybody is outraged. I wonder? Frank, Schumer, and Dodd are using this as a deflection to keep our attention off the Stimulus Bill. These executives should be shot but this is small potatoes compared to the wasteful spending of billions on pork in the Stimulus Bill!

By the way, Barney Frank should be the last one to say anything. If a statue could be sculpted with a blend of incompetency and dishonesty it would be in the likeness of Barney Frank.


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Friday, March 13, 2009

Pet Sematary





Sematary instead of cemetery? Remember this disgusting book. Later to be made into a movie. Somehow I was conned into going to the movie. Honestly I almost walked out. I have walked out of movies before, and should have this time.

However, this movie will serve some purpose, and that is to make a point.

To put this garbage in context a couple with two young kids living in Maine has a cat that is run over in front of their home. On their next door neighbor's advice they take the cat to the pet sematary to bury it. The next afternoon the cat returns home. It smells of death, with an unearthly look and weird eyes. Birds and mice are torn apart, not to eat, but for shear pleasure.

A while later the guy's son is run over by a Mack truck. He burys his son at the pet sematary.
Shortly thereafter the kid returns home, possessing all the skills of a demon, he now resembles "Chucky". First he kills the next door neighbor. Then his own mother.

Finally realizing what a monster he is the father is forced to kill his son. He then gets the bright idea to bury his wife (the son had just killed) in the pet sematary. Even if you didn't see the movie, I bet you could guess the result.

OK. Three days later she taps him on the shoulder and says........."Darling."

If you do the same thing, you get the same results!




If there is a moral in this story I guess it would be:

  1. Don't mess with mother nature....or
  2. Don't interrupt the Yin and Yang of the natural world...or
  3. My favorite. Don't defy the will of God by trying to change the universal progression of... death follows life.

Simply put. Some things are better off dead.


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You are probably wondering.... what the hell does this have to do with politics!

Two words. Free market.

Our government has become the "Pet Sematary."

First Bush and now BHO is the caretaker of the "Pet Semetary." They are interfering with the natural progression of the free market system. You cannot artificially keep something alive that desperately needs to die. Banks that have made poor business decisions (if you had a pulse you got a mortgage) will be absorbed by banks following sound business practices. Our democracy is set up with laws to provide for this contingency. Its called bankruptcy.

Lets take the case of insurance giant AIG. Just recently they announced they lost 62B last quarter. The biggest lost of any company in the history of the world! So the "Pet Sematary" sent them another 30B. Last time I checked a share of stock in AIG was worth 43 cents; their market cap was 1.16B. Essentially that is net worth of the company. . All told, the taxpayer (so far) is on the hook to AIG for a staggering 180B!!!

I hate like hell to see the car companies go out of business. The fact of the matter is:

GM said it would need up to $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury to continue operating. GM has already received $13.4 billion.

Chrysler wants $2 billion more on top of the $4 billion it has already received and the $3 billion it is expecting from Washington.

To its credit Ford has not asked for loans. Makes me want to buy a Ford!

Here again with the big three bankruptcy is in order. File for it, restructure, and get rid of the UAW. Maybe a merger is also on the agenda.
The big three have been losing market share since 1962. GM's market capitalization is smaller than Harley-Davidson's. In 1962 half the cars sold in America were made by GM. Now its market share is roughly 25 percent. In 1999 the Big Three -- GM, Ford, Chrysler -- had a 71 percent market share. Their share is now 58 percent and falling. How will throwing billions of dollars at it with the same management effect a different outcome?

But wait. The "Pet Sematary" will tell you, "They're to big to fail!" No there not. They're to inept to succeed. The answer is file bankruptcy, restructure, or merge. The only true test of achievement is result. You can't turn a jackass into a race horse no matter how much money you throw at it.

Another word the "Pet Sematary" likes to throw around is transparency. What exactly is that? Its the full, accurate, and timely disclosure of information. The other "Chucky." (rhymes with Schumer) said this recently, "Yeah, there's a lot of pork in the bill... but so what the American people don't care!" Well I must say. He is transparent. Not only is he is going to shove it up our ass, but he's going to rub our nose in it too!

Shovel-ready is another catch word they like to use. You better have one ready to dig your way out of debt because Pelosi is already talking about... Stimulus II... The Sequel.


When you're in your car and its 96 degrees and a dead animal is lying on the side of the road you can barely stand the smell. A month later you drive by the exact same spot and you can't smell or see anything.

With the stroke of a pen we have put a scar on future generations of Americans by paying 787Billion to clean up a stink that the free market system would have naturally taken care of all by itself.

If only we would have given it a chance to work.





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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The Joke Of The Year

(Click It)





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Monday, March 9, 2009

To Gain A Perspective



(From a email I received)


What does one TRILLION dollars look like?


All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...


A billion dollars...


A hundred billion dollars...


Eight hundred billion dollars...


One TRILLION dollars...


What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup <http://sketchup.google.com/> out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.


We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.








A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.








Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.













While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...













And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...













Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing about so much. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It's pretty surprising.

Go ahead...

Scroll down...

Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars...








The guy is so small you can barely see him in the left corner

(And notice those pallets are double stacked.)

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about.










The estimated population of the United States is 305,788,992
so each citizen's share of this debt is $35,857.51.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.70 billion per day since September 28, 2007!












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