Two-face would be more appropriate than Joker

All of a sudden, or rather after reports of Banks' PACs and executives switching their donations to the elephant after the donkey's teat turned sour, Obama comes out as a supporter of bonuses and a champion of capitalism, telling Democrats that "We’ve got to be the party of business, small business and large business.”

clipped from www.bloomberg.com President Barack Obama speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while [Dimon's bonus of] $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.” Dimon, 53, led New York-based JPMorgan, the second-biggest U.S. bank, to a profit during each quarter of the financial crisis. Blankfein, 55, was at the helm when New York-based Goldman’s shares doubled last year as profit soared to a record high. [Sounds like they didn't just make the Series: Dimon won the Golden Glove, and Blankfein got the Cy Young trophy too.] “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.” President Barack Obama called bank bonuses “obscene” at least twice this year. Obama is “trying to walk a very fine line,” said Mark Borges, a compensation consultant “He wants to represent popular anger at the bailout and Wall Street pay, while at the same time trying not to alienate these guys, who he needs [to give him the "obscene" amounts of money that he relied on to win the 2008 election.]

The New State of the Union

clipped from dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com President Obama plans to call on Thursday for taxing about 50 big banks and major financial institutions for at least the next decade to recoup all taxpayer losses from the Wall Street bailout fund. While the banks maintain that taxpayers made money from the bailout to save them (many have repaid their federal funds with interest and the government also has made money in selling the banks’ warrants that it held as collateral), losses to the bailout fund are expected from money paid to rescue the automakers Chrysler and General Motors and the insurance giant American International Group, and from a program to help troubled homeowners avert foreclosures. The administration official said that the auto manufacturers and A.I.G., as well as the housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which now are under government conservatorships, are not in a financial position to be taxed to recover taxpayers’ losses. The administration is calling the tax a “financial crisis responsibility fee,”

Taxing those who paid their loans back early and at a profit to the American people to pay for failures who are explicitly excluded from the tax and calling it a "responsibility fee" is perverted irony that passes for logic in the current Administration.
I'm not saying the banks didn't have a hand in the crisis because that's just as absurd as saying that they were more responsible than Washington lawmakers gagged by lobbying bribes and regulators who should be charged with criminal negligence. Let's not forget the American people, so quick to let their fingers be pointed for them at an easily vilified target. Groupthink on this scale hasn't been seen in 70 years. Nobody wants to blame themselves when it's so much easier to demand reparations from the rich with your head held high. After all, in our culture that honors victims before heroes being impoverished connotes a certain moral superiority - which makes it all the easier to remind the wealthy of their noblesse oblige.

A Darling Buffoon

Alistair Darling must have slept through his maths classes in elementary school. If you want to get tax revenue from the rich, but also command firms to curb bonus payments then where are you going to get that extra money from?
At least he is being completely "Frank" about his socialist, Robbin' Hood, ideals. Maybe Labour should just drop the pretense and rename themselves the Pathetic Proletariat Party.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, targeting what he calls “greed and recklessness” in Britain’s financial system, asked banks to curtail bonuses and said the rich will pay more in tax. “It is right that those who earn the most should shoulder the biggest burden.” “We will introduce legislation to end the reckless culture that puts short-term profits over long term success. It will mean an end to automatic bank bonuses year after year.” Darling said he has raised tax rates and eliminated relief for pension contributions for the rich. This week, Darling will [ask bank heads of remuneration] that they reduce bonus payments at the ahead of a change in the law aimed at formalizing curbs on pay. “The government’s implicit presentation of excessive remuneration as the cause of the crisis, and the banking bill as a silver bullet that will kill off financial excesses, is singularly unconvincing,” said Simon Morris, a partner at law firm CMS Cameron McKenna.

White House wants to bring out the Pavlik Morozov in all Americans

I am sure this name Pavel Morozov is foreign to Americans. In a nutshell, he was a darling young boy who achieved martyrdom in Soviet Russia by reporting his father's un-Partylike activities to the police. The father was summarily arrested and executed, and Pavlik's family, unable to see his unbridled patriotism, murdered him. There are statues of Pavlik throughout Russia, and schoolchildren were indoctrinated taught about his courage and bravery.
The Administration hopes that Joey Sixpack will take Morozov's fallen torch by sending in "fishy" emails about the President's Master Plan to the authorities at the White House. Can you imagine the [completely justified] outcry had Bush enacted such a policy?
I am sure that this story will be generally dismissed by the media and quickly die down in popularity (maybe the President can stage a bourbon summit as a distraction this time?), but the fact remains that fundamental principles on which this country was founded upon are being ever so slightly encroached.
Put a frog in boiling water and it'll jump out, but turn the heat up slowly and it will never realize that it's being boiled alive.

clipped from www.whitehouse.gov Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

CFTC Helping Green America with $10 Gas

I'm starting to see the brilliant foresight of the master plan of our current Administration's social engineering program. Eroding liquidity in the energy markets that are easily accessible to hedgers (gas pump operators, airlines, utilities, etc.) who actively need big banks & other investors (speculators) to take the other side of their trades will certainly cause gas prices to spike at the pump, make air travel & shipping the luxury it once was, and ensure that the President is the only one who can keep his office tropically warm in the winter.
Since companies won't be able to put floors on the price of gasoline, natural gas and other commodities their costs will be at the mercy of a very volatile supply and demand and they will have to adjust their prices up to ensure they can still make a profit in any given quarter. That is, until they're nationalized because they can't sustain independent operations anymore and are too big to failll into the wrong hands (like those of a successful foreign company that might fire some US union workers).
This policy will at once force people into buying hybrids and increase the cost of imports (which makes Obama's protectionist allies happy). Of course it would be extremely unpopular to achieve these goals through gas taxes and import tariffs. Making this appear to be a crusade against evil market manipulators makes it far easier to achieve the same results with popular support.
Of course with taxes and tariffs at least the government would make some money to pay back the exponentially expanding debt load, but that's the problem of another generation. At least the Earth they'll inherit will be green, that's good since all their money will be going to interest payments they'll have to learn how to live off the land.

clipped from online.wsj.com CFTC Will Pin '08 Price Surge on Speculators, in a Reversal From Bush Findings. Under Chairman Gary Gensler, appointed by President Barack Obama, the CFTC is departing from the more hands-off approach it took under its previous head, a George W. Bush appointee. During his confirmation process earlier this year, Mr. Gensler said he believed speculation was partly behind the surge in commodity prices. In the U.S., the CFTC begins public hearings Tuesday to determine whether to limit speculative investments in commodities. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, has called on the CFTC to curb "oil speculators looking for a quick buck at the expense of American consumers." [CME Head] Craig Donohue, said: "We are deeply concerned that inappropriate regulation of these markets will cause market participants to move to dark pools and other unregulated markets, causing irrevocable harm to the entire U.S. economy." Last year, CFTC Chief Economist Jeffrey Harris told a House Agriculture subcommittee: "The economic data shows that overall commodity price levels, including agriculture commodity and energy futures prices, are being driven by powerful fundamental economic forces and the laws of supply and demand." Mr. Harris didn't return a call to comment. The acting CFTC chairman at the time, Bush-appointee Walter Lukken, told the House Agriculture committee that CFTC's economists "did not find direct evidence that speculation was driving up prices." Mr. Lukken, now an executive at the New York Stock Exchange, declined to comment. U.K.'s Financial Services Authority has found no evidence that speculators are behind big oil-price swings. The FSA doesn't believe that limiting the size of trading positions would be "beneficial" for the market.

Let's drop the pretense and the trousers.

Apparently the firms that were able to quickly repay the TARP money, with 23% interest to the taxpayers, and immediately turn a profit are not to be praised. Indeed, they are villains of the highest order. Their crime is that they dared to succeed without the government's help and oversight. In fact, those unbridled rapscallions couldn't wait to shake Geithner off the saddle and spit Obama's bit from their foaming mouths.
Naturally, Obama is upset that there's an important sector of the economy he doesn't have full control over - so it's important we quickly pass reform to nationalize everyone, regardless of their financial condition. At least he's finally being forthright about his intentions.

clipped from www.pbs.org JIM LEHRER: Speaking of the economy, do you share the concern and growing anger by some people over the fact that these big Wall Street banks are suddenly making these huge profits while the unemployment rate continues to go up, foreclosures continue to rise, all kinds of other bad things are happening to individual Americans on the economy. PRESIDENT OBAMA: The problem that I've seen ... is you don't get a sense that folks on Wall Street feel any remorse for having taken all these risks; you don't get a sense that there's been a change of culture and behavior as a consequence of what has happened. Now, there are some companies, like Goldman Sachs, that have paid the money back and that means that we don't have the same kind of levers on them that we might have. And that's why I think it's important to pass this broader financial regulatory reform package. Make no bones about it, I am pushing hard.

P.S. If you don't want firms to take irresponsible risks, then maybe you shouldn't let lobbyists tattoo "2Big2Fail" on the back of every lawmaker's skull.

Captain Morgan shows the Somalian Pirates how it's done

While the amateur Somalians are busy raiding rich tourists and cargo ships, Captain Morgan knows that far bigger booty lies in the pockets of American politicians, not just because they're fat. They're stupid too.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Lawmakers and the public are just now discovering some of the curious subsidies tucked into TARP. Governor John deJongh Jr. agreed to give London-based Diageo Plc billions of dollars in tax incentives to move its production of Captain Morgan rum from one U.S. island -- Puerto Rico -- to another, namely St. Croix. The Diageo deal started shortly after deJongh took office in 2007. The governor says the company contacted him to say it planned to leave Puerto Rico after having decided the U.S.V.I. might be a better location to produce Captain Morgan. [as in they were already planning to move] The U.S.V.I. will give subsidies representing as much as 44.5 percent of tax revenue to Diageo. Diageo also qualifies for additional tax incentives, reducing its U.S.V.I. tax liabilities to as low as 3.5 percent, from 35 percent. The $2.7 billion Diageo tax break in the October bailout bill gives the most financial aid to a non-U.S. company. Diageo, which had a stock market value of 21 billion pounds ($35 billion) as of June 8, reported net sales of 5.07 billion British pounds in 2008. Revenue from selling rum accounted for 5 percent of Diageo’s income. [do the math on the value of the subsidy relative to product revenue on this one] Still, Captain Morgan, named for Henry Morgan, the 17th-century Jamaican privateer, is a major driver of earnings for Diageo, spokeswoman Zsoka McDonald says. [well, it is now!]

A guesstimate is not a lie, just bullshit

To quell concerns of constituents that the stimulus plan will do nothing but enslave future generations to foreign creditors and inflation the Administration has enlisted the help of the stimulus recipients (the needy greedy governors) by asking them to round up their guesstimates of how many jobs Federal money created.
Good thing we have plenty of bored economists and statisticians to point out the inevitable inaccuracies in employment statistics that will result from government clerks who can barely flip burgers at Mickey D's attempting to cook the books.

clipped from online.wsj.com President Barack Obama had promised that the stimulus plan would save or create 3.5 million jobs. Republicans have criticized the plan and the reliability of the administration's numbers. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll suggests growing public doubts, with 39% of those surveyed saying the stimulus is a "bad idea," up from 27% in January. Meanwhile, some state officials worried about how they were supposed to count jobs credited to the stimulus. Now, the White House Office of Management and Budget has given states guidance calming these concerns. Recipients won't be asked to grapple with complicated estimates, he added. Instead, they may use their best guess whether a job would have been created or saved in the absence of a recovery plan, and to not count it if they are uncertain. Philip Mattera, research director for the economic development research group Good Jobs First, said the method appeared to be "a bit impressionistic" and presented pitfalls.

Rob the Rich: Forced Charity

Yes We Can... fund universal healthcare by taxing the very people who have no need for it. The bourgeoisie have squeezed the juices of the proletariat with their mighty kulak to quench their unpatriotic greed long enough! Now we shall drain the very marrow from their spines (and harvest the stem cells therein)!
We’ll hit them hard on their mortgages. Sure, we're disincentivizing the people who can actually afford to buy a house and create upward momentum in the housing market, thereby generating positive equity for every homeowner organically. Homeowners facing foreclosure and looking for a handout are one of our strongest constituencies, why would we not want to grow it?
We'll cap their investment gains. Markets are the engine of the capitalist machine. We want to keep them going at precisely our chosen speed limit, and we are pouring billions into the enforcement of our arbitrary laws. Of course we see no need to disband the SEC, their peccadilloes, like ignoring evidence of Madoff's scam, pale in comparison to their ability to choke vehement short sellers and regulate other speculators out of existence.
We’ll decide how much the rich give to charity too. The only worthwhile charity is the one the government deems necessary: funding the socialist welfare state.
Oh, and just to make sure that they don't keep trying to persevere and prosper despite the shackles we have put on them we will change tax code so their estate goes to the government after they die. Bourgeoisie progeny can get in the bread line with everyone else.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Democrats Weigh Health Mandate as Obama Urges Taxing Wealthy The president is trying to avoid broad-based levies such as a Senate proposal to tax some employer-provided health benefits Axelrod said. Instead he is urging lawmakers to reconsider limiting all tax deductions for Americans in the highest tax brackets. Obama is “mindful” about how “ordinary Americans are able to foot the bills.” Obama’s own proposal would set a 28 percent cap on tax deductions for items such as mortgage interest, investment expenses and charitable gifts Obama also proposes new taxes on securities dealers and life insurers, and to raise revenue by prohibiting certain estate-planning techniques. The plan would place new restrictions on private insurers, including a bar on excluding coverage for those with “pre-existing conditions.” The effort to overhaul health-care would affect a sector that makes up 17 percent of the U.S. economy.

Vive La France?

I love vacations, and if I can stimulate the private aviation, lodging and retail industry while enjoying my just reward then I'm all for it. What I'm not for is the government getting its nose even deeper into the pockets and personnel policies of small (or big) business.

Employees and employers have the right to agree on a contract that makes the most sense to those two parties.

Many employees prefer a higher income to vacation days. Even a kid who failed arithmetic (at least in a European school) can tell you that an employer with limited resources will have to cut gross yearly salaries to account for mandatory vacation. The cut is likely to be more than just the wages for five days’ work, however, when you account for scheduling and training expenses in a small business, where every employee plays an important role and job overlap is minimal. This policy will thus directly hurt the business and benefit nobody, while creating a breadth of negative externalities - including for the government since a business that earns less pays fewer taxes.

clipped from www.politico.com Rep. Alan Grayson was standing in the middle of Disney World when it hit him: What Americans really need is a week of paid vacation. So on Thursday, the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Bill. The idea: More vacation will stimulate the economy through fewer sick days, better productivity and happier employees. So far, no group has come out in opposition of the bill. Nor has anyone announced opposition to roller coaster rides, cookouts on the beach or salt-water taffy on the boardwalk. “There’s a reason why Disney World is the happiest place on Earth: The people who go there are on vacation,” said Grayson, a freshman who counts Orlando as part of his home district. “Honestly, as much as I appreciate this job and as much as I enjoy it, the best days of my life are and always have been the days I’m on vacation.” France currently requires employers to provide 30 days of paid leave.

Didn't see that one coming!

No, but seriously, like I said when this first broke wind - good luck getting capital from any sane investor without putting a gun to their head (an option I'm sure Rahmbo put on the table).
This, combined with the downright moronic mandated CAFE standards (which will at best lower temperatures by 0.0078 degrees ... in 2100) ensure the destruction of American automakers.
If conspiracy theorists thought Bush was owned by Haliburton, how come nobody is saying that Obama's pockets are lined by Toyota?
On the upside, however, once the government runs out of money (or prints so much of it that the dollar is worthless), the unions will have nobody to turn to for funding their fundamentally inefficient and unsustainable business practices and will become extinct. Too bad they're taking the entire country down with them.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Pacific Investment Management Co., Barclays Capital and Fridson Investment Advisors have joined Schultze Asset Management LLC in saying lenders may be unwilling to back unionized companies “Anything that involves a large number of jobs or affects a large number of people, you can expect to see a Chrysler redux,” Jerry del Missier, president of Barclays Capital, said in an interview from his New York office. “One of the consequences here is the so-called speculators, people who provide financing, will think twice about getting involved.” Unions spent $52 million to help elect Obama, which includes $5 million from the United Auto Workers, according to OpenSecrets.org “People are starting to think ‘This is a very activist administration, even more than we counted on,’” said Martin Fridson, CEO of money manager Fridson Investment Advisors in New York. “If it comes down to the interest of creditors or labor unions, the administration is going to override what you thought you could do.”

Godfather Paulson made banks an offer they couldn't refuse

This is nothing new to anyone, especially considering what we already knew about the BofA/ML prearranged marriage, but now there's proof that Paulson was a government gangster.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said nine U.S. banks would have to accept $125 billion in government investments or be forced to by regulators. “If a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware that your regulator will require it in any circumstance” “Your nine firms represent a significant part of our financial system. Therefore, in our view, you must be central to any solution,” the memo said. Three and a half hours after the meeting was scheduled to begin, Paulson had obtained the bankers’ signatures on half-page forms along with the handwritten amount of the federal government’s investment, according to the documents. He announced the actions publicly the next day. “Most Americans are going to be uncomfortable with the government forcing the banks into this arrangement,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a nonprofit research group in Washington that obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request. “This is, in many ways, thuggery.”

Chrysler's bankrtuptcy undermines America as a Nation of Laws

Those evil hedge funds, the “small group of speculators” Obama so harshly critiqued for daring to be the Davids to his rampaging Goliath, are otherwise known as Senior Secured Bondholders, as in the creditors first in line to get paid - and they're going to get the shortest end of the stick, right up their butt.

"A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none,” Obama said.

Right, like the sacrifices that the UAW is making - giving up a few benefits and taking a small pay cut in exchange for majority control of the automakers (which will later on let them adjust their salaries to whatever they wish).

Some of the hedge funds, Obama said, demanded returns twice as high as other lenders were getting.

Senior secured bondholders are supposed to get the most money, in fact they're supposed to get paid out before anyone else gets a penny! The fact that this populist message resonates so loudly across the country speaks only to the citizens' legal illiteracy.

Does Obama’s team have even the modicum of rudimentary intelligence to recognize that in continuing to blatantly ignore and break our country’s laws they are ensuring that nobody in their right mind will ever want to invest in these companies ever again? How do they expect banks to shore up private capital or for programs like PPIP to work? The government's need for private sector help is only going to grow as it spirals further into debt, so it would be wise to cease alienating the investor class and start making real concessions and working together to save the economy.

Please read the full statement at blogs.wsj.com As of last night’s deadline, we were part of a group of approximately 20 relatively small organizations; we represent many of the country’s teachers unions, major pension and retirement plans and school endowments who have invested through us in senior secured loans to Chrysler. Combined, these loans total about $1 billion. None of us have taken a dime in TARP money. To facilitate Chrysler’s rehabilitation, we offered to take a 40% haircut even though some groups lower down in the legal priority chain in Chrysler debt were being given recoveries of up to 50% or more. Our offer has been flatly rejected or ignored. The fact is, in this process and in its earnest effort to ensure the survival of Chrysler and the well being of the company’s employees, the government has risked overturning the rule of law and practices that have governed our world-leading bankruptcy code for decades.

I smell a Rattner

And now we have another money scandal from our hopeful Administration. This time it's involving the poor taste and poor cover up skills of the new Car Czar. I guess if you've got some skeletons in your closet it's better to do community service for Obama than do time in the can.

clipped from online.wsj.com President Obama's auto fix-it man, Steven Rattner, is in the news as one of the Wall Street financiers hit up for big money as part of New York state's unfolding pension-kickback scandal. This is the same political class that has been blaming banks for "greed" in the financial crisis. The pension fund scandal exposes the myth of the superior virtue of the public and nonprofit worlds. Greed is universal. And the opportunity for corruption is enormous when political discretion is tied to vast sums of public money. In Mr. Rattner's case, SEC documents say he met with the brother of Mr. Loglisci to discuss acquiring the DVD rights to "Chooch," a low-budget movie that Mr. Loglisci and his brothers were producing. Quadrangle, through an affiliate called GT Brands, agreed to acquire the rights for about $89,000. Several weeks later, Mr. Loglisci told Mr. Rattner that Quadrangle would be getting a $100 million investment from the pension fund.

What? You thought communism didn't come with a police state?

This was one Bush program I was completely against from the start, as were most people who grew up in a totalitarian regime where secret police silenced all dissent, and used their power to usurp the civilian population's property and lives as they pleased. Before he was elected I naively thought that one upside to Obama will be that this case will be thrown out quikcer than my tax dollars in bailing out AIG. Apparently not. We can spy on our own innocent civilians all we want, but there is no “war on terror” and Gitmo residents will get taken care of by the taxpayers for life. I guess it's Change you better believe in, because we know where you are and what you're saying.

clipped from www.eff.org Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments. First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue "would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security." As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration "invoked a legal tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court." The Department Of Justice's second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes. This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way. Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ's radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama's own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.

Jake DeSantis is a Real American

We need more people like Jake right now. He's not a hero, but true American in the classical Federalist sense. These are people who aren’t afraid to look tyranny right in the face and say “Don’t Tread On Me”.

When a government is using outright extortion to get money from its citizens, when banks are forced to accept unwanted capital that comes with retroactive strings manned by a maniacal puppeteer, when debate is condemned by the White House, when succeeding in the American Dream becomes a crime, when the constitution is spat on by every half-wit in Washington - that is when we need to look back upon our Founding Fathers for guidance and resist oppression.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington

Please read the entire letter here.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G. I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage. After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

Andew "Consigliere" Cumo makes AIG an offer they can't refuse

Seems like we've gone from mob rule to outright Mafia politics.

extortion (plural extortions)

1. the practice of extorting money or other property, especially by a public official, by the use of threats
2. Extortion, outwresting, or exaction is a criminal offense, which occurs, when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime groups and the US Government.

clipped from online.wsj.com A memo sent by an American International Group Inc. executive appears to advise employees in the company's Financial Products division that their willingness to give back controversial bonuses would spare them from being publicly identified by authorities. "To the extent that we meet certain participation targets, it is not expected that the names would be released, at all," said the memo. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said last week he had received a list of employees that received retention bonuses at the AIG unit but wouldn't make the names public immediately. Late Monday, Mr. Cuomo said 15 of the top 20 AIG bonus recipients had agreed to give back their payments, amounting to more than $30 million in cash. The state attorney general said he's aiming to recoup the 47% of the total bonus pool received by American employees. He also said he sees no public interest in publicly releasing the names of people who return their bonuses.

Brace for Impact

This is redistribution of wealth – plain and simple. It’s coming with tomorrow’s vote.
First they made healthy banks take bailout money, which I have been saying since the beginning was designed to nationalize them through retroactive amendments, and now they are plowing ahead at full speed – their wheels greased by the minor incident at AIG (the $165mm of bonuses in question is 0.1% of the $173bn that the government gave the firm!!!). Stealing the bonus of every bank employee in order to punish these select few individuals is like carpet-bombing an entire village just to kill one low-level insurgent who could never impact the outcome of the war.
Couple this with the guillotine blade of stagflation rising ever higher over our heads and it is becoming clearer by the day that the American way as we know it is coming to an end.
I don’t really know what else to say, except get ready to fight for your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Washington will do everything in its power to take it away and will feed whatever senseless propaganda is required to achieve this purpose to the eager mouths of its constituents, blinded by rage.

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. House Democrats plan a vote tomorrow on a measure imposing a 90 percent tax on executive bonuses paid by American International Group Inc. and other companies getting more than $5 billion in federal bailout funds. “I expect it to pass in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters today in Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said, “The American people are very upset about what they’ve heard about bonuses.”

The legislation would apply to bonuses paid to employees at companies such as Citigroup Inc. and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel of New York.

The measure is the first legislative response to a political furor that erupted after insurer AIG, which got taxpayer-funded bailouts totaling $173 billion, paid $165 million in bonuses last week to 4,600 employees. Many receiving bonuses are in AIG’s financial products unit, the credit-default swaps subsidiary whose losses pushed the insurer to the brink of bankruptcy in September.

The measure was being drafted today as AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy told a House Financial Services subcommittee that he asked employees who got bonuses over $100,000 to repay half.

The 90 percent tax would apply to people with overall income exceeding $250,000, including bonuses. The tax would apply to bonus payments made after Dec. 31, 2008, and it would cease when the U.S. government’s investment in the company fell below $5 billion.

The Senate is readying a separate measure that would impose a 70 percent excise tax on the bonuses, split between the company and employee.

Congress is acting after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter to lawmakers last night that his department’s lawyers determined it would be “legally difficult” to prevent AIG from paying the bonuses because they were required by contracts.

“We passed a recovery act, we did not pass a license to steal,” New York Representative Steve Israel, a Democrat, said at the news conference. “The middle class will no longer subsidize pay for failure.”

Asked how lawmakers reached the 90 percent figure, Rangel said, “We figure the local and state governments will take care of the other 10 percent.”

Sanford Shot Down

Yo...this be the realest shit you'll ever quote.

My president is black, my Lambo’s blue.
The economy is red, and he ain’t got a clue.
Got a white hustler, failing the Treasury.
Meanwhile Obama is vacationing leisurely.

Buying rocks for his baby-mama,
Dropping some dough.
While the world’s got drama,
He’s sipping Bordeaux.

Sanfrod spittin’ straight dope,
Trying to get through.
But how can we have hope
When there’s only one world-view?

Change you can believe in?
Why the rhetoric so thick then?
And if discourse is a sin,
Is it Democracy we're in?

clipped from www.google.com Sanford last week wrote Obama and asked for a waiver that would let the state pay down debt during the next two years with $700 million instead of using it to create jobs and avoid deep program cuts. The Obama administration has rejected South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's request. The DNC is airing an ad in South Carolina that says Sanford is putting politics ahead of health care, jobs and schools by trying to turn down part of the federal stimulus money. The governor said in a statement it was "disturbing" the ad was launched before the White House had responded. Sanford said the ad is at odds with Obama's campaign promises of ending politics as usual. "It's in that spirit that I'd respectfully ask him to end this ad, as it shatters the idea of change he so well articulated this fall — and to ask his Democratic National Committee to put an end to this mudslinging and get back to an honest debate about the future of our country," Sanford said. But the future of that money may not even be for Sanford to decide. Last week, state Sen. Hugh Leatherman, a Republican, introduced a resolution that would allow the state legislators to spend the cash despite Sanford's opposition.