Earlier, you replied to my post about Senator Chris Dodd adding an amendment to the Stimulous Bill that made the AIG bonuses possible. Your reply brushed my comments off as "a good conspiracy theory on right wing blogs."

Well, I don't read the "right wing blogs," Joan, unless you consider Real Clear Politics -- where both sides are presented editorially -- a right wing blog. But I DID see what's been all over the news the last couple of days. Here's a sample:

"In a dramatic reversal Wednesday, Sen. Chris Dodd confessed to adding language to a spending cap in the stimulus bill last month that specifically excluded executive bonuses included in contracts signed before the bill's passage."

BTW, did you know that Dodd also happens to have received the most money in "contributions" from AIG -- raking in a cool $103,100. Wow! What a coincidence!

Yeah, he's a real sweetheart, Joan. The victim of a right wing conspiracy for sure.

Citizens are livid that the national and global economies have been destroyed by the clearly amoral greed of Wall St and its enabling by Congress.

I can't agree more Joan that it's insane these very same people rake in millions as REWARD for their willful destruction.

As has been pointed out on cable news repeatedly, the claim that their contracts "must" be honored is ridiculous, contracts are renegotiated all the time.

In fact NONE of the excuses for these bonuses hold any water, including that these "talents" must be retained; that they're magically the only people on the planet who can unravel AIG; or that they'll compete against AIG from other companies: this is always true in any business, and these people ALREADY destroyed AIG!

Regardless of this particular market being "unregulated" there is no doubt of intentionally fraudulent - and therefore criminal - behavior: they knew full well that AIG couldn't honor the insurance they were selling and profiteering from.

Andrew Cuomo has begun, god bless 'im, and the Justice Dept must join, to investigate and prosecute with stiff fines and prison terms.

As new owners of AIG the gov't can and must fire and replace every executive who was even remotely connected to these activities, and institute the proposed $100k bonus cap for every employee of ANY corporation that receives taxpayer funding - with NO loopholes.

The real outrage is that two men in treasury should not be there.

Mr. Geithner is a bright, hard working man but too timid and inexperienced for perhaps the toughest job in Washington, at least at this time.

Larry Summers, the man who was removed as president of Harvard for saying women in science were not as smart as men, should not be in government at any level.

The genius in treasury is Paul Volker but the hot shots placed him in a corner and do not listen to him.

The politicians will continue to stoke the outrage over the AIG bonuses because it distracts the peasants from the fact that AIG didn't rob the taxpayers blind, the politicians did.

You go to the employees and say "Sign this paper giving up your bonus, or we fire you for misconduct in letting the company get this screwed.".

Happens all the time.

I mean, they should be able to lay-off/fire with cause most of these people..

Let's roll the clock back to 1976 when we had wage and price controls on the economy designed to control inflation. Remember "WIN" buttons which was "whip inflation now" and this was a Jerry Ford invention. Pricing in the economy was controlled by the federal government. The federal gov't was involved in every decision, no matter how minor, such as what color uniforms an airline flight crew was allowed to wear prior to 1975. The overall experience in the 70's was so poor with this type of regulation that everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the airlines and the telephone companies were deregulated in the late 70's and early 80's. It was all very bipartisan because it was the right thing to do. Companies like FedEx were a direct result of airline deregulation.

All this cry of foul will only lead to all the bright guys leaving AIG for good, and then good luck recouping your $160bn investment, Einsteins!!!

-- ramkum

How is that supposed to be a threat or something that we should be concerned about? What "bright guys" would those be? The "bright guys" that ran AIG into the ground? Or the "bright guys" that not only ran it into the ground but lied and schemed to take away as much money as they possibly could in the process?

Who in the hell do you still think believes you when one of you AIG lobbyists comes around with your horse crap about "bright guys" and how we'll all suffer if we try to take a few bucks back from the thieves? Take your show some place where someone isn't on your ancient, transparent scam.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031804210.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009031801503

Ok, time to go, time to go. We'll see you again when Joan says another nice word about Hilary Clinton, but you got to go

By the way, who exactly is going to run AIG for the government, assuming they were interested in imposing their leadership team on the company? The answer is -- EXACTLY the same people who are running the company now because the government would have no choice in this instance but to hire professionals with the requisite experience to run a business the government doesn't know a thing about.

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've seen written this year regarding the ill-conceived bailout.

I'm sorry, but the people running AIG are clearly IDIOTS. I mean, HELLO? Knock. Knock. Is there anybody at home in there? We The People just had to bail them out to the tune of something like $200 billion (and counting).

Oh my god, their genius executives might leave if we don't pay each of them extra millions on top of the millions they ALREADY EARNED for driving their company the way Mr. Magoo drives a car? Oh, the horror! The horror! Whatever will we do without these geniuses running the company? Where will we find a similar gaggle of feces flinging monkeys to replace them?

Quick! Somebody call the zoo!

I wouldn't hire an AIG executive to run a taco stand.

There are mass layoffs happening all over Wall Street. Nobody will be hiring the AIG apes anytime soon. Let them walk. There are tens of thousands of competent unemployed people out there who could replace them.

AIG is an insurance company. This is not rocket science.