Bonuses=Sideshow-'Legal Loan Sharks Confiscated Billions-Rewarded By Lobbyists'-By Robert Scheer

[kpete]

Robert Scheer's Columns
Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses

It was because of Paulson that AIG was saved from bankruptcy hours after Goldman rival Lehman Brothers was allowed to go down the drain.

Posted on Mar 17, 2009
Cuomo and AIG
Laying down the law: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is on AIG’s case.

By Robert Scheer

There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York’s top lawman is on the case.
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As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank: “The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals’ bonuses to be 100% of their 2007 bonuses. Thus, in the spring of last year, AIG chose to lock in bonuses for 2008 at 2007 levels despite obvious signs that 2008 performance would be disastrous in comparison to the year before.”
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But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power. It was the biggest payoff among those that AIG made to a score of foreign and domestic financial giants.
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Goldman Sachs was into AIG insurance policies for at least $20 billion, which is why the firm got that $12.8 billion while Paulson was in charge. It took six months for the embarrassing facts to finally come out. The bailout program was administered by Neel Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs VP; why are we not surprised at that?

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What we have here is a rare glimpse into the workings of the billionaires’ club, that elite gang of perfectly legal loan sharks who, in only the most egregious cases, will be judged as criminals—Bernard Madoff, former chairman of NASDAQ, comes to mind. These other amoral sharks, who confiscated billions from shareholders and the 401(k) accounts of innocent victims, were rewarded handsomely, rarely needing to break the laws their lobbyists had purchased.

more at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090318_perp_walks_instead_of_bonuses/

[monmouth]

1. Andrew Cuomo, next Governor of the State of New York. He's on this

and taking names.

[burythehatchet]

2. been trying to push this story for 3 days

[valerief]

3. Daz right. nt