Mortgage Boy..This piece of crap is up for re-election in 2010

Allow me to add a few comments on this article. Dodd is Senate Banking Committee Chairman. This is the same Chris Dodd that
got a sweetheart deal on his mortgage from this snake Anthony Mozilo the former CEO of Countrywide. When asked about this (July 2008) Dodd said he would provide full details on his mortgage dealings. When the news broke, the Senator first denied that he sought or expected preferential treatment. He later admitted that he knew he was considered a VIP at the firm but claimed he thought it was "more of a courtesy."

When pressed by the WSJ to produce the papers he said,"he can't find them."
This guy is the Senate Banking Committee Chairman and he can't find his own mortgage papers???

Instead of being arrested, the snake (Mozilo) left Countrywide with with a severance package of $110 million! In a Time Magazine article... 25 People To Blame For The Financial Crisis... Mozilo was ranked 3rd.

(Click if you want to see the entire list) http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1878509,00.html

(Naturally a Democrat tops the list!)



In another strange coincidence no one in Congress has ever received more campaign contributions ($104,300) from AIG then Chris Dodd!

If this bastard is re-elected in 2010 (frankly, he should be removed from office now) the people in Connecticut have only themselves to blame. He has been a fixture there since 1981. Its not an election, its a coronation. Wake Up!

Sen. Dodd Admits Adding Bonus Provision to Stimulus Package

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said Wednesday the Treasury forced him to add language to the stimulus bill last month that exempted all executive bonuses made before February 11, 2009.

By Trish Turner

FOXNews.com

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

In a dramatic reversal Wednesday, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., confessed to adding language to the stimulus bill last month that exempted all bonuses that bailed-out companies had promised to employees before Feb. 11, 2009.

(Want finger pointing...point it at yourself)

Dodd told FOX News that Treasury officials forced him to make the change.

"As many know, the administration was, among others, not happy with the language. They wanted some modifications to it," he said. "They came to us, our staff, and asked for changes, and the changes at the time did not seem that obnoxious or onerous."

But the provision has become a flash point for criticism amid the controversy over $165 million in bonuses given out by AIG after securing more than $170 billion in federal aid. The language in the stimulus bill wasn't specific to AIG, but some have expressed outrage that it appears to have created a loophole.

Dodd said the argument put forward by Treasury was that a "flood of lawsuits" would come forward if the change was not made.

Dodd said he was unaware of the AIG bonuses at the time the bill was being written back in early February. He also said he has no reason to believe Treasury officials making the argument knew about the AIG bonuses.

When asked how administration officials have this kind of leverage over members of Congress, Dodd said, "The administration has veto power. ... No one suggested a veto to me, I don't want to imply that to you. But certainly that's not an insignificant tool."

On Tuesday, Dodd told FOX News that he didn't add the exemption.

"When the language went to the conference and came back, there was different language," he said then. "I can tell you this much, when my language left the Senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did."

Dodd still thinks the Treasury can get the bonuses back, despite the inclusion of a date in the stimulus bill, and he said officials are, in fact, using his very language to claw back the money.

"There is language after that date that says explicitly that the Treasury has the right to modify, reaching back, those bonuses, compensations, if it's inconsistent with the TARP legislation or contrary to the public interest," he said.

"In fact, it's that phrase that the administration is relying on this evening as a means by which they can reach back and maybe get these bonuses back," he said.

Still, Dodd has his enemies. The Senate Republican re-election campaign quickly shot out a statement on the Dodd reversal, as he is a prime target in the 2010 midterm elections and is facing a Republican opponent who, in one poll, is in a statistical tie with him.

"Senator Dodd's reversal on this issue is both astonishing and alarming," the National Republican Senatorial Campaign said in a written statement. "Contrary to his statements and denials over the last 24 hours, Senator Dodd has now admitted that he and his staff did in fact change the language in the stimulus bill to include a loophole for AIG executive bonuses."

The group added that Dodd had "misled voters and equivocated on his statements."

Mortgage Boy..This piece of crap is up for re-election in 2010

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

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.

Retention Bonuses

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

Related: AIG, GS, C, BAC, DB, BCS, XLF

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.

For Once... We Agree (with reservations)

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.

Pet Sematary

The Joke Of The Year

(Click It)

The Joke Of The Year