Tag: AIG

Aug 31 2009

AIG: the surreal corporation

It is a strange characteristic of modern journalism that it is so consensus driven that huge stories are completely missed. Such is the case with the surreal resurrection of AIG corporation. Not content with caretaker management intending to quietly sell off the remnants of AIG, the cancer men behind the Obama administration have chosen a pompous retired CEO, Bob Benmosche, to “revive” this zombie corporation.

Recall that the US taxpayers have pumped about $180 billion dollars into AIG, and that the current (highly inflated) market capitalization of the company is only $6 billion. There is not the ghost of a chance that the taxpayers will ever get their money back, because most of it was paid out to back crazy casino bet derivatives. But none of this matters, because the Obama administration does not believe in running corporations financed by the taxpayers. No, this would suggest that the Government could actually manage an organization better than the people who wrecked it.

Thus, we now enjoy the surreal spectacle of a bankrupt organization supported by taxpayer funds hiring a CEO who tells the government to back off and let him run the company according to his whims. We, the US taxpayers, are paying the salary of an arrogant blowhard who insists that he has the right to do with our funds as he pleases because he is a member of the CEO caste.

How many more companies will turn into Federally funded zombies run by loose-cannon CEO’s? How can one even predict the actions of managers who are completely untethered to any financial reality? It is as though the US economy is slowly turning into a comic-book caricature of itself, a Bizarro world of incongruity and excess, with the only constants being corruption and unaccountability.

Aug 20 2009

Another inmate to run the Asylum

AIG jumped 26 percent to $33.65 after Benmosche said in an interview in Croatia that “at the end of the day, we believe we will be able to pay back the government and we hope we will be able to do something for our shareholders as well.”

Why, you may ask, does the newly appointed CEO of AIG speak from Croatia? That is where Mr. Bob Benmosche is vacationing, at his million-dollar villa. Despite his weighty responsibilities as the newly-installed CEO of America’s most worthless insurance company, he decided not to interrupt his vacation to go to the office. You might also ask why Bob is so feisty and confident about his prospects when the US government effectively owns his company. The answer is simple. The government owns AIG, but has no effective control over it, and the ever-opportunistic Benmosche realizes this. He can do anything he pleases because the Obama administration desperately needs his cooperation to conceal the dimensions of the disaster at AIG.

There has been no investigation of the AIG debacle, and no effective accounting of the vast funds poured into this company. Now a strutting, blustering, rich CEO is taking over and telling the government to stop meddling in the business that it owns. Everything is back to normal and the inmates are running America’s financial asylum again.

Jul 27 2009

Rachel Maddow breaks down Wall Street Deregulation into these simple Frames …

Way back in March of 2009, Rachel explained the “Highway Robbery” which happened on Wall Street, using a few simple word-pictures. (ie. simple Frames).  These perhaps deserve a quick review …

Rachel Maddow – Cops and Robbers

Link to Rachel’s very humorous  Clip

Great Framing Rachel! … I love it, when Progressive Talkers, make learning FUN! The simpler the Word-Pictures, the better the Frame!

“Is our childrens learning?” as George W. used to ask.  

Could be, … Maybe we just needed to “Turn the Page” …

Jul 24 2009

Spitzer: Banks and Fed conspired in massive Ponzi Scheme UPDATED

UPDATE:   The link below should work now.  

Here’s a video everyone in America should see.  If you’ve felt like you’ve never quite understood the whole financial “crisis” that occurred last fall, the repercussions of which persist to this day (and will for, quite possibly, generations), this video explains it all in a clear and concise manner.  

Elliot Spitzer than goes on to explain that what was perpetrated on the United States, by collusion between the Fed and the very banks that control it, was a massive conspiracy to defraud the United States — a Ponzi Scheme he calls it.

Now Elliot Spitzer’s dick may have gotten him in trouble, and he certainly displayed bad personal judgement by sleeping with hookers while in public office, but there’s nobody who knows the whole NYC-based financial universe better than he does.    There’s a reason they were looking at his life with a microscope, trying to find anything they could to bring him down.  Because he was one of the few threats to the corruption that has taken over Wall Street and the banks.  Now he’s out of the picture as Governor of NY but he is free to speak his mind, which is a good thing.  So when he says “Ponzi scheme” people listen.

Trillions of dollars, folks.   Trillions, handed to the very banks who robbed us all in the first place.   It’s like the gamblers at the casino suddenly ran out of money, so they held guns to the heads of everyone they could find and emptied their wallets to pay their own gambling debts.  Watch it.

Hm, well the embedding doesn’t work for some reason.   Here’s a link instead:  

UPDATE:  FIXED LINK (the other one worked before, but now does not):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22…

(if anyone has any tips for embedding MSNBC video, let me know and I’ll try it here.   The embed code they provide doesn’t work)

Jul 14 2009

With Friends in the Treasury — Bankers don’t need NO Accountability

Elizabeth Warren was appointed chair of a newly created Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which is charged with keeping tabs on the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector – including Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Warren however, has had some “Trouble” getting straight forward answers … as she explained to the Boston Globe:

Jun 09 2009

It’s YOUR DARN FAULT, but I’ma gonna fix it

It’s your fault you sick bastard.

You got sick.

You weren’t strong enough.

At the very least, you might get sick.  

You sure as hell aren’t a Senator, and you don’t have a good enough job.  

You don’t own any banks at all, you worthless scum.  

Not even a little local bank.  

(My abject apologies if I’m wrong, and you do own a bank–I didn’t mean YOU at all–I meant all the rest of YOU–sorry, sorry… I’ll buy you a drink)

So, anyway, because of your abject failures to properly provide for yourself, we’ve had to put our lofty heads together and come up with a really, really neat solution:

MANDATED HEALTH CARE: IT’S WHAT”S ON THE TABLE

(nice title right…or should it be ‘it’s what’s for dinner…. ? Na…)

(fine print: If you don’t pay the insurance company, you go to jail.)

Got that?

Simple, right?

Even all you idiots here that didn’t get in to Morris College, Yale, oughta be able to figure this one out.

Let me say it again: if you don’t pay AIG.

Every Month.  

On time.

May 14 2009

Kucinich: This is NOT acceptable, Mr. Liddy. I’m not going to let you get away with it!

Mar 26 2009

Beyond Lamestream

A medley of items from a vision atop the Apocalyptic Horse.

UPDATE: Bilderberg Meeting is early this year!

http://www.americanfreepress.n…

Mar 24 2009

Geithner’s “power grab.”

Cross-posted from Passive Ranting.

Read about it here.

Here’s the summary:

The crisis surrounding the American International Group was a near-tragedy that underlines the need for broad new government authority to regulate or even take control of financial institutions other than banks, the government’s top fiscal officials told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Geithner claims that if this power existed back in September, current measures such as endless bailouts and seven-figure bonuses for mentally-questionable financial fuck-ups would not have happened.

Mar 23 2009

A Diary A Day – Let’s Name Names at that crap table

I have been asked some interesting questions in my series A Diary A Day. Like is it possible a single home mortgage is represented in multiple bundles, or has trigger multiple insurance payments.

Let explore the possibilities below the fold.  

Mar 23 2009

Come Home America: An Interview With Truth Teller William Greider

Photobucket

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

I first became aware of William Greider after the publication of his 1981 Atlantic Monthly profile of President Reagan’s embattled Office of Management and Budget Director (“OMB”), David Stockman. At the time I was just a kid and the Reagan administration insisted they could simultaneously balance the budget, cut taxes and increase defense spending exponentially.

Greider’s reporting however exposed that even Stockman, doubted the fiscal prudence of Reaganomics. After the article’s publication, Stockman absorbed public humiliation when President Reagan took him “to the woodshed.” I trace that article as a seminal moment in my own political awareness.

Mar 22 2009

A Diary A Day-7 million homes lost-5 million more could follow

I tried this diary on Tuesday and pissed a lot of people off, not my intention.  I am trying again because this is really important and I promise to take the time and choose my words carefully. There are a lot of reasons Obama organized us and showed us how to demand better of all government, in the very near future we are going to need everything we know and everything we can learn.

Since 2004 7 MILLION homes have been lost to foreclosure. There are about 3 million more homes under the protection of Chapter 13, homes the lenders are trying to chip out and take. There are more than 5 million sub prime loans in or on the verge of foreclosure right now. 1 in 8 homes has either been lost or is in jeopardy of being lost and we are not at the bottom yet. Not since the Great Depression has the average American suffered the wrenching loss of home and job and future. It is not only a significant turn over of wealth but will also bring significant changes to the American landscape. Depending on how deep the turn over it will change American cities and towns for all time and with those changes the quality of life for all of us.

And so it starts the slumming of America, more below the fold.  

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