Who Stole Our Country, and How are We Going to Get It Back?

[masuki bance]

Jane Hamsher weighs in-

"Robert Reich says that the administration's failure to stop this is a sign that "our democracy is seriously broken," and it is. When the story was initially leaked by a "senior government official," this was the excuse for the administration's impotence in what can only be characterized as a grand theft:

The administration official said the Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken.

This is difficult to accept at face value -- there would be no AIG if the US government wasn't shoveling cash into it at a furious pace, and the idea we have no leverage in the situation is absurd. It becomes even more risible when Larry Summers jumps into the fray:

"We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system."
...

Yesterday we found out that Geithner made a $27 billion dollar gift to AIG counterparties, paying off credit default swaps at 100% of their value. Gretchen Morgenson in the NYT asks why these insurance claims "were paid off in full, even though widespread defaults on the underlying debt have not occurred?" Geithner has now reached a "deal" whereby AIG executives get millions more in bonuses by March 15, then more in July, and then September, but AIG has to show that they've made progress "selling off business units and repaying the government."

American taxpayers now own 80% of AIG. They'll be paying back the government, and paying off the bonuses, with our money. There is no reason to be tiptoeing around these people.

Are Geithner and Summers are just too aligned with Wall Street interests to do what needs to be done?

The bottom line is -- nobody trusts them. Congress needs to use its subpoena power to get a hold of these AIG contracts and make their own analysis.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/16/who-stole-our-country-and-how-are-we-going-to-get-it-back/

[masuki bance]

1. kick for 2 recs

[Dinger]

2. Kick For Infinity Recs!

:headbang:

[Imagevision]

3. sniff-sniff...illiminati...!

[truedelphi]

4. If someone lookslike a fox, stinks like a fox, and has hung out w/ a lot of foxes eating chicken

Should they have been appointed to be in charge of the hen house?

All Obama needs to do is to ask Barbara Boxer to spend half an afternoon with Kucinich and Issa. They have been so mad they can barely spit out their questions at times, when interrogating Paulson and Kashkari. And I am sure they are not much more pleased with Geithner or Bernanke. Once she is informed by them on all the scores that need to be settled, she would make a GREAT Treasury Secretary.

[Imagevision]

5. Obama needs to take five regroup and lay down some new rules to the game!

[bvar22]

6. All the DU cheerleaders proclaim....

...that these Free Trading De-regulating, Corporate Lackeys "Work For Obama, and will only implement Obama's Policies."

--Or at least that is what they chanted last month.

[Jim Sagle]

7. It may be true...not that it would be GOOD news.