AIG Execs Save Economy By Returning Bonuses

There is something so simplistic by all the attention being paid these unwarranted bonuses. Do they deserve the money? No. They’re really greedy and stupid people. They probably can’t tie their own shoes. Nevertheless, the 165 million dollars their bonuses added up to, minus the thirty million returned due to death threats, are but a pittance compared to the trillion dollars in bailout funds floating around. 

Yet these bonuses are taking up days and days and days in congress, as one congressman after another gets on the microphone and yells at some guy who has only been on the job four months. You have to ask yourself why. And the answer that your brain comes up with is alarming. They’re doing it because they don’t know what else to do. They don’t want to go on record trying to help. They don’t want to attack each other. So they latch onto this lint hair of a problem and don’t let go. 

Meanwhile the economy is tanking. Banks are holding onto their money tighter than Ty Cobb. Nobody’s lending. Nobody’s spending. And people are getting laid off by the hundreds of thousands. Right now, both sides of congress are doing all they can to wage a populist battle against greedheads and making it all but impossible that any actions Obama might make trying to get us out of this mess are either made impossible or turned into an epic slog. 

And when it all goes further south, they will all turn and look at Obama as if the whole thing was his fault. He’s a socialist with a wife who refuses to wear shirts with sleeves! He’s more interested in March Madness than doing anything about the economy! He’s too cool for Washington’s sewer level fighting style!

The media and congress all have us looking at the little bitty things while the big things go undone…

Taking AIG’S Lead, Bernie Madoff Changes Name

Bernie Madoff, in an effort to avoid prison, is taking AIG’s lead, and is starting proceedings to change his name. “It’s this Bernie Madoff guy that’s in all the trouble. Me? I’m Frank Ludoff…” In jail for money laundering and massive fraud, the chances of his ruse working or slim. But then so are the chances of running a 65 billion dollar ponzi scheme for thirteen years…developing…

AIG Playing With Fire

There are greedheads. And there are buffoons. And there are criminal sociopaths. But what AIG has done, considering their history and all they have done before and all that has happened since last September, defies any logical explanation. First they come begging for help after helping unleash a cancer on the global economy. So we gave them billions of taxpayer dollars. Which they used to go on a junket and got facials. They were hauled in front of congress and publicly lambasted for it. Then the CEO of Merrill Lynch comes under fire for using taxpayer money to give out bonuses. Much was written about how colossally dumb it was for him to do it. You would think AIG would have seen the writing on the wall and chose a wiser course for themselves. But no. They take 165 million dollars of tax payer money and give it out as a reward to its executives for being absolutely lousy at their jobs. Sort of like finding out you are paying money to the inventor of the Ebola virus…

It says something about how corrupted our culture is at the very top that they simply have absolutely no way of acting like normal rational human beings. They have done things – with our money – their way for so long that they can’t bring themselves to show a lick of remorse or act the slightest bit humbled by the destruction that their greed unleashed. Like someone breaking a vase and then getting mad when you ask them to clean it up.

What I don’t understand is this: we have infused countless billions in capital in AIG to keep them from falling apart. You would think that they would want to do everything they could – passing out checks at golf tournaments don’t count – to repair their reputation and work their way back towards solvency. Instead, they are doing all they can and more to assure themselves that nobody will ever trust them or want to do business with them or ever give one penny to them again. (You know you’re doing bad when a republican senator suggests you commit suicide)

AIG claims that the bonuses – which are being given to the very ass clowns in the very division that is at the very epicenter of Wall Street’s demise – are “necessary” in order to “retain talent.” This makes no sense to me. These are clearly people who lack talent, unless one considers bankrupting your company talent. 170 billion dollars has been given to this company. The most ever. And, to repay the favor, they have decided to send bags of excrement to their benefactors. Thanks for the help, now sit down and watch helplessly as I burn your house down.

Technically I own 80% of this company. So do you. But I don’t feel like I’ve made such a good investment. In fact, I want my money back.

John McCain and the Death of Twitter

John McCain is so famously out of it technologically, that Obama that it was the focus of a campaign commercial against him. The man is plain old out of it. So it can not be good news for Twitter that John McCain is using it for political sarcasm. If the likes of John McCain are employing social networking it can not be long before we see its demise. Twitter has just jumped the shark.

Stimulating Nothing

If you listen to Republicans, all this spending Obama is proposing is outrageous. He is a socialist and the harbinger of the end of free enterprise. The democrats promote their package as a massive, but necessary, boost to the economy. Neither is correct. The truth is, our situation is such a mess that tripling the amount of the stimulus would barely fix what we’ve done to ourselves and the rest of the world. It’s ugly. It’s an economic virus that we’ve unleashed throughout the world. Other countries have already stepped to the plate and stimulated their economy. We will dither and grandstand and flail about in order to pour a cup of water in the ocean. 

We know this. Our leaders think we don’t. And I think that’s why there’s not a lot of confidence in the market right now. Washington -on both sides-isn’t showing any signs of knowing what to do. Our system of checks and balances – combined with 24/7 news coverage-make us not the most nimble of countries in times of crisis. Six months after this thing- and by thing, I mean the bedrock from whence the entire global economy relies-started to go, we’re still waiting for the starter gun to go off. Politicians go on television and make speeches for one viewpoint or another, accomplishing nothing and getting us nowhere. 

This stimulus bill will make it through congress over the protesting bodies of lots of brainwashed Republicans. But it’s not enough. It won’t do enough. And that’s the pathetic sad truth nobody wants to acknowledge.