Random Pieces of the Puzzle So Far.
1. The search for who killed Snowe-Wyden must start the evening of Tuesday February 10 in a windy, cold Washington, just after the Senate voted 61-37 in favor of a vast $838 billion stimulus bill. Three Republicans joined with 58 Democrats to move the legislation: Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins of Maine, and Olympia Snowe of Maine
2. We are told that White House officials traveled to Capitol Hill to meet
with the Democratic leaders in order to agree upon a final version for the bill for vote as soon
as the next day.
3. We are told, "After huddling in Ms. Pelosi's office on Tuesday until
nearly midnight, top White House officials and Congressional leaders had all but
ironed out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the
stimulus by noon on Wednesday."
4. On Wednesday 11 February, the ten Congressional conferees gathered in "a packed Lyndon B. Johnson Room on the Senate side of the Capitol." The senior Republican conferee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said later that he never got a chance to negotiate anything.
5. On Friday 13 February, Senator Snowe says she learned that the Snowe-Wyden amendement was out of the final version as it was approved by the House and Senate and sent to the White House to be signed into law.
6. In the place of the Snowe-Wyden was the Dodd Amendment that grandfathered bonus contracts prior to February 11, 2008.
7. Who did it? Who are the suspects? Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut says that he didn't do it,
he wasn't even in the Conference: furthermore he says that Treasury officials
negotiated with his staff about the Dodd Amendment, which was not connected to
the Snow-Wyden. Senator Dodd says
that "White House officials," were part of the negotiation.
8. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon says that he didn't do it. He says that it "didn't happen by osmosis," and that he argued with "key players in the Obama team" but that he was "not able to convince them" to leave the Snow Wyden Amednement in tact and in the final version. Senator Wyden mentions names in the "Obama team." He mentions Larry Summers, Tim Geithner.
9. Senator Olympia Snowe says that she didn't do it. She says that her amendment "inexplicably" disappeared. "It was a little bit confusing -- what was in, what was out. For a while I thought that it was in, then they were going to take parts of it. They went back and forth for quite awhile," she recalled. She also says the she pressed "one person in particular," but wouldn't use a name.
10. What about Treasury officials? Tim Geithner has commented on his knowledge of the bonuses with different dates. He has said he didn't learn until March 10. It is also documented that he was told about it on March 3. Also, there is a report that Treasury officials knew the bonuses were an important issue as early as November 5 in the Bush Administration, when Tim Geithner was still was at he New York Fed. However Geithner is given a free and clear signal from his assistant Gene Sperling, who told a National Review audience on Thursday even March 19 that the polical appointments at Treasury did not remove Snow-Wyden.
11. In sum, the Hill says that it didn't do it. Dodd, Wyden, Snowe say they didn't do it. Geithner, Sperling say they didn't do it. Sometime between Tuesday evening February 10 and Friday afternoon February 13 and the final vote, the Snowe-Wyden was yanked out and the Dodd was substituted.
New Clues
Folks, Geithner, Bernanke, and the Bush Treasury Department knew about the AIG bonuses for months. According to AIG, the payments were OK'd by the White House last Thursday. Why? Because it appears that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel grossly underestimated how infuriating this would be. We weren't authorized until Thursday night," the AIG executive said. "We were negotiating with the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Treasury indicated that they needed it cleared by the White House, as well. We hit the go button for the payments on Friday."
Yesterday I noted that Rahm Emanuel had said that Obama saw the AIG fiasco as a "big distraction" from efforts to fix the economy. Later in the day, Obama walked that back, asserting that the public was right to be "angry" about the whole mess and right to find it "consuming." Today, another senior Obama adviser, David Axelrod, is throwing in his lot with Rahm and the AIG-isn't-a-huge-deal camp: "People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG," Axelrod said. "They are thinking about their own jobs."
By JENNIFER LOVEN - 3 days ago
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's chief of staff says Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's job is not in danger over AIG bonuses.
White
House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel categorically dismissed to The Associated
Press any suggestion that Geithner is in trouble.
The millions of dollars in bonuses that insurance giant AIG gave to executives, amid taking billions in federal bailout money, have caused widespread outrage, at the White House, on Capitol Hill and among the public. Questions have arisen about when Geithner knew about the bonuses and whether he did enough to try to head them off.
...Yet the next day, President Obama was in front of the microphones
insisting that the Treasury would "pursue every single legal avenue to block
these bonuses."
Matthew Continetti of Weekly Standard
gave his take on the flip-flop:
Why did Obama shift so quickly? Here
are two reasons. One, the administration may finally be learning that, while it
can still blame the economy on Bush (for now), it does own the bailouts. And
any populist furor over the bailouts won't just be directed backward at Bush.
It will also be projected forward onto Obama and Geithner.
Second, any day now the Obama
administration will reveal the details of and begin to implement their bank
rescue plan. That plan requires the government to provide leverage for private
financial institutions. The private institutions will put up some money, sure.
But, to get them to do that, the government will have to put up A LOT of money.
Another trillion, perhaps. And that means public support is absolutely
necessary. Public support that may slip away if the AIG problem isn't resolved
soon.
Well, we'll see about the rest, but
he was certainly right about the trillion.
As for my assumption that nobody
could find the A.I.G. situation unimportant, there were a couple of exceptions.
First, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told The Times that the bonus
kerfuffle "is a big distraction" in efforts to fix the economy.
Then David Axelrod, the strategic genius of the Obama campaign, told the
Washington Post that "People are not sitting around their kitchen tables
thinking about AIG, ... they are thinking about their own jobs," which
not only didn't tie in very well with the president's "every single legal
avenue" approach but seemed oblivious to polls like this one.
This left the Plum Line's Greg
Sargent shaking his head: "Again, this just seems weird politically," he wrote
of attempts to pretend that folks aren't outraged about the issue "at a time
when Republicans are moving aggressively to paint Obama as too passive on the
issue and position themselves as the outraged and heroic defenders of the
taxpayers?"
"It's not 'weird' -- it's panic," responds
Commentary's Jennifer Rubin:
The entire crew is drowning in a
public feeding frenzy of their own making. So they are throwing out whatever
argument pops to mind. The contracts can't be changed! Oh, we're going to do
everything we can to stop this! Oh, who cares!?
And then the president gets into the
act, comparing AIG execs to suicide bombers. Is that really the right metaphor
for the leader of the Free World?
You sense even their widely admired
political skills are buckling under the weight of events and the scrutiny that
goes with occupying the White House. It's a good thing they don't like big
government or spending money, or we'd really have to worry about them getting
in over their heads.
The always-interesting Daniel Drezner
has come up with an analogy that either exonerates Emanuel and Axelrod or simply shares their
tone-deafness:
AIG bonuses are to the left side of
the political spectrum as congressional earmarks are to the right side of the
spectrum.
Why? Well, these two things have a
surprising amount in common.
* Neither of them poll terribly
well;
* Both of them reflect waste, inattention, and borderline corruption in
handling the government's money;
* Both issues force the other party to say
something to indicate that they don't support these things;
* Earmarks
represent a very small percentage of the omnibus spending bill; bonuses
represent a very small percentage of the AIG bailout;
* So, given the current
economic situation, both of them are huge honking distractions and do not
matter a whole hell of a lot.
Good arguments, and Drezner, and academic, is free to live by them -- but do we really think Axelrod and Emanuel (and, by extension, the president) have the same sort of latitude.
IF CONGRESS GOT PAID FOR PERFORMANCE, IT'D BE AT THE POVERTY LEVEL.
No one in Congress knew that the money it gave to AIG would go for bonuses. That may be true. Maybe no one in Congress read the bill that it passed that gave AIG the money. However, there were billions in bonuses given to Merrill Lynch in December, which caused a little problem for Ken Lewis and Bank of America, which bought Merrill. So, are we to believe that no one in Congress could put two and two together and, at least, ask maybe if AIG didn't also have the same pay structure that every other firm on Wall Street has? Gee, maybe Turbo Tax-Challenged Geithner had a clue, since as the head of the NY Fed, he had something to do with regulating Wall Street. And didn't he also have something to do with the bailout of AIG in September?
The real crime here is that, if this pay theft becomes law, it will be the equivalent of the Smoot-Hawley tariff -- which people give credit for making a depression into The Great Depression. This time, when looking back and wondering how the US lost its banking superiority to Europe or Asia, we can correctly thank Congress for driving bankers overseas. Of course, there's also one particular individual to thank -- and that would be Chris Dodd. As head of the Senate Banking Committee (wasn't his name on the amendment that let AIG keep its bonuses even though he had nothing to do with it?), he has an incentive to see the banks lose their top talent because of bonus theft, pay limits, etc. Why? Because all of them won't go overseas. Many of the best and brightest will go to the hedge funds which are almost all, coincidentally, in his state of Connecticut. The hedge funds and private capital, which are now called the shadow banking system will come out of the shadows and, along with foreign banks, take over US banking. And how will they do that? With the help of bankers and AIG execs who all lost their bonuses or can get higher paying jobs elsewhere. These people probably know better than anyone how to price the toxic assets which they helped create -- but why tell anyone? Keep it to yourself until you're safely in a new job at Deutsche Bank or some Asian Sovereign Fund or a hedge fund where you can buy up these toxic assets at a fraction of what they're really worth. After all, this is Geithner's plan -- eliminate the toxic assets with a public/private partnership. Only one problem: The Turbo Tax-challenged genius can't price them and these execs can. So let's drive them out of AIG and all big banks, so AIG can go under and take billions of tax dollars along with them. [This bonus theft, as well as pay limits if it becomes law may apply to every company that took billions in bailout money.]
The US lost manufacturing superiority many years ago. What replaced it? Tech. After the tech bubble? The service industry. That is, banking, real estate, mortgages. Without banking, what industry do we have left to keep us in the forefront of world trade?
Depressions used to be called panics. The panic is still here. Only now, every single person who's panicking is in Congress. This all could have been avoided if Congress were ahead of the problem, instead of behind it. If the bonuses weren't paid in cash, but instead paid in stock which couldn't be sold for a few years, every AIG exec would have a stake in staying at AIG and seeing it become solvent. Now, thanks to Congress, every AIG exec who loses his bonus has a stake in seeing AIG fail -- which means we'll all fail along with it.
-It's too little to late... The correct path is hind sight now AIG should have been done and restructuring. We can not "clawback" . We can ostracize Executives who will rightly claim what the rule of law grants them
This is how we repeat the errors of FDR initial response in 1930"s that we today were allegedly to smart to make.
Who Killed Snow-Wyden? Everyone did...bit by bit - a piece in the Treasury secretaries' office still sits in the waste basket (apparently they can't find janitorial person's willing to work there either) Dod recognizing the midterm elections were just 'round the corner & some chief contributors would be in a pinch without their bonus. Some MAY have actually recognized the very unlawfulness of it and tried to actually do the horribly distasteful "right thing".
But in the end this too shall pass... just yet another indicator that DC needs an Enema...
Paging Nurse Ratchet!!!!
Who killed Snowe-Wyden? At this juncture, it's a moot point (until election time, of course). But, we can place some of the blame (some, i.e. 3/61) for the removal of Snowe-Wyden on the three so-called Republicans --- Snowe, Collins, and Specter --- who cast their lots with the Democrats in order to get the Senate version of the bill passed. How so? Did these three turncoat Republicans really believe that their Democrat / Socialist colleagues would act in good faith once the bills went to commitee for reconciliation? What made these three think that the enemies of the American vision would act any differently this time? (The phrase "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me for the umpteenth time, shame on me...again," comes to mind.)
Ultimately, the American public will find someone to clean out the Augean Stables which the halls of Congress have become, but that will require more than the diversion of the Potomac River to accomplish. In the mean time, the Republican Party (and, more specifically, conservative Americans and other patriots) must jetison the three boobs who sided with the 58 Democrats. Specter --- or is that S.P.E.C.T.R.E. ? --- is and has been treacherous, but Collins and Snowe are simply nitwits that may as well be members of the other party. RNCC monies should be better spent on the campaigns of more deserving candidates in other parts of the country. If Snowe and Collins want to be a part of the team, then let them earn it. And Specter, regardless, should be anathema forever more.
Good to see all of these new names coming to offer their very poignant remarks and thoughtful comments.
Tell your friends! JB is the best!!!
Everyone loves a mystery – a popular diversion. Witness the trajectory of careers the likes of Christie, Doyle and James. If, however, the end of the last chapter fails to produce a villain, the mystery also fails.
Nobody in Washington these days exhibits anything beyond finger-pointing and obfuscation. As such, they have managed to turn the town into a circus. And even the success of circuses depends on some measure of competence; superhuman feats and dazzling display. The best we’ve been shown thus far is the antics of mouth puppet spittle.
As the audience dwindles and the ticket prices are raised - and the public stays away in droves; and the ticket prices are raised again - the big top is forced to play to an empty house. Eventually, it is decided that the animals can no longer be fed; and the doors to the cages are thrown open. This causes chaos in the community. People barricade themselves in their basements, afraid even to go to the store. Commerce stops.
At some point, those who still have guns will venture out. At first they search only for provisions to sustain themselves and their families. Skirmishes erupt. The bravest (or the most brutal) discover their power. They organize alliances based on the ability to intimidate; to out-brutalize. Gone now are the niceties – the moments by which John and Yoko contrive the appearance of love and peace from a bed in Amsterdam.
Survival has become the only game worth playing.
Oh boy, more evidence of smarmy cronyism blended with arrogant incompetence, glazed over with vague gangster tactics.
We are barely 60 days into this and I am frankly finding it very wearisome to sustain this much anger and frustration for this long toward the government. And toward all of Obama's rosy-viewed supporters, in the media and on the streets. The news of the day (pick a day, any day) elicits nothing but a sense of crashing cynicism and bitter dejection-- which, added to the anger and frustration, are about the only sentiments I muster toward the Administration, House, and Senate. Outside of bewilderment, which is only a precursor to one of the other four.
I know a lot can happen before mid-term 2010, and it's pretty clear the hoi poloi respond to emotional vicissitudes which are easy enough to manipulate-- but I just can't see how the Democrats come out of the next round of elections without sustaining serious body blows. The populist rage is clearly growing, it's hard to imagine where it'll go in the next 3 years 10 months. I know some here seem to believe the country won't last that long-- I don't subscribe to the notion myself. But I do think we're going to be in worse shape. I'm too young to remember Carter's mysery index, but it's easy to imagine having it reinstated under the current Prez.
I just hope the Republicans don't waste this crisis either.
Blathering Washington pols (Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, etc.) declare that executives at failing businesses, that take Federal bailout money, don't deserve to receive bonuses. One could also make the argument, (modeling Obama's style), that failed Politicians don't deserve to be re-elected. But they do, and are rewarded with chair leadership positions. I can't see any difference between the two camps.
Who killed Snow-Whyden? Let's see--which one of the 7 dwarfs is the most likely culprit...
There is Dopey (Tax-cheat Timmy)--nah, too clueless.
Sleezy (Rahm Emannual) --possibly. He had motive, opportunity, and the necessary lack of character.
Sleepy (Dirty Harry Reid)--No, he couldn't find his buttocks with both hands.
The Wicked Witch of the West (Nazi Pelosi) --A definite suspect. She wants to be known as the most unfair of them all.
But, the most likely suspect of them all, the biggest liar, cheat, and deceiver possibly ever seen in American national politics ---OBIE!
It's not just Snow-Whyden that he's killed, but the American Free Enterprise System. No happily ever after here!
Some low-level staffer will get fingered for this at some point. No, I don't mean Geithner. Even lower than that.....
More Clues: with names, dates and suspects form the twenty year history of the AIG financial unit: from T PM Muckraker, by Zachary Roth and Ben Buckwalter:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/the_rise_and_fall_of_aigs_financial_products_unit.php?ref=m3
So here's a rundown of some of the key developments in AIGFP's tumultuous history -- many gleaned from a superb three-part December 2008 Washington Post series on the unit (parts 1, 2, and 3):
From a Humble Start, A Swift Rise
- AIGFP was founded on January 27, 1987, when three Drexel Burnham Lambert traders, led by finance scholar Howard Sosin, convinced AIG CEO Hank Greenberg to branch out from his core insurance business by creating a division focused on complex derivatives trades that took advantage of AIG's AAA credit rating.
- In addition to his two partners, Randy Rackson and Barry Goldman, Sosin brought 10 other staffers from DBL with him -- including future AIGFP CEO Joseph Cassano. The team of 13 set to work in a windowless makeshift room, at first without full-size desks and chairs, in an accounting office on Third Avenue. AIGFP's first significant deal, made in July 1987, was a $1 billion interest-rate swap with the Italian government.
- In its first 6 month of existence, the unit earned more than $60 million. Under the agreement that Greenberg and Sosin had signed, 38 percent of that went immediately to AIGFP, with the remaining 62 percent going to AIG proper. Crucially, the agreement also called for AIGFP received its profits up front, even though its deals generally took years to play out. AIG itself, not AIGFP, would be on the hook down the road if things went wrong. This arrangement would be modified, but only partially, after Sosin left in 1993.
- AIGFP soon moved to a swanky Madison Avenue office. A few years later, it would relocate again to Wilton, Conn, which remains the unit's headquarters today.
- By 1990, AIGFP had expanded, opening offices in London, Paris and Tokyo.
- In 1993, Sosin left AIGFP, in part thanks to a strained relationship with Greenberg. (He got a reported $150 million payout). Tom Savage -- a Midwestern math whiz who had joined AIGFP in 1988, after beginning his career at First Boston writing computer models for collateralized mortgage obligations, the very instruments that would later help cause the current crisis -- soon took over as CEO.
- By that year, AIGFP employed 125 people, and was consistently raking in more than $100 million each year.
- By 1998, the unit had a revenue of $500 million. But it still had never made a single credit default swap.
The Seed Of Ruin Is Planted
- That year, JP Morgan approached AIG, proposing that, for a fee, AIG insure JP Morgan's complex corporate debt, in case of default. According to computer models devised by Gary Gorton, a Yale Business Professor and consultant to the unit, there was a 99.85 percent chance that AIGFP would never have to pay out on these deals. Essentially, this would happen only if the economy went into a full-blown depression, in which case, the AIGers believed, the counter-parties would be wiped out, and therefore would hardly be in a position to demand payment anyway. With the backing of Cassano, then the COO, Savage greenlighted the deals. Credit default swaps were born.
- In 2000, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which further reduced the already weak regulation of derivatives like credit default swaps*.
- Later that year, Cassano, now based in London, who in addition to serving as COO had been running AIGFP's Transaction Development Group, replaced Savage as CEO. Cassano, the scrappy son of a Brooklyn cop, was no expert in the sophisticated computer models that assessed risk, but he had a gift for credit and accounting, and a fierce drive to succeed. At this time, the unit brought in $1 billion a year, and had 225 employees. By 2005, it would have 400.
- In 2002, the Justice Department charged that AIGFP had illegally helped another firm, PNC Financial Services, to hide bad assets from its books. To do so, AIGFP had set up a separate company, known as a "special purpose entity" to take on the assets. It had violated securities law, the Feds alleged, by setting up sham "companies" to invest in the entities, making them appear real. In 2004, AIG settled the charges by paying an $80 million fine, and gave back over $45 million in fees and interest it had earned on the deal. By the terms of its "deferred prosecution" agreement, it was placed on a short leash by the Justice Department. There is no evidence that anyone at AIGFP was formally sanctioned as a result of the episode.
- In March 2005, Greenberg, who had run AIG since 1968, stepped down as CEO, amid an investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer into questionable accounting practices at the firm. Though the issue was unrelated to AIGFP, the unit would soon feel the ripple effects: the credit ratings agencies responded to Greenberg's departure, and the allegations of irregularities, by downgrading AIG's rating from AAA to AA. That, in turn triggered provisions in some of AIGFP's credt default swaps, requiring AIG proper to over $1 billion in collateral for the deals. It was the beginning of the end.
- Later that year, an AIGFP exec named Eugene Park took a close look at the firm's credit default swaps portfolio, and became alarmed. Many of the CDOs that were being insured contained too large a proportion of sub-prime mortgages, meaning the risk of default was high if the housing market collapsed. And with AIG proper's credit rating having been downgraded, there was an increased chance that it would have to come up with collateral to cover those bets. Park told Cassano and others about his concerns.
- In response, Cassano worked with researchers from the investment banks to assess the risk form subprime mortgages, and decided in late 2005 it was time to stop making credit default swaps. But he couldn't undo the nearly $80 billion worth of collateralized debt obligations that AIGFP had made swaps on that were already on its books*.
- Still, as late as August 2007, Cassano was sanguine about the deals, telling investors on a conference call: "It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions."
Things Fall Apart
- But that same month, with the housing market collapsing and sub-prime assets plummeting in value, Goldman Sachs demanded $1.5 billion in collateral from AIG, to cover the mortgage-backed securities that AIG's credit default swaps had insured. Under the terms of its contract, AIGFP was required to post more collateral than it would have had its credit rating remained at AAA. By October, it had posted almost $2 billion, and other counter-parties were beginning to make their own collateral demands.
-Between early October and mid November, AIG's stock price fell 25 percent. That month, AIGFP reported that its swaps portfolio had lost $352 million. A month later, Cassano put the figure at $1.1 billion
- Late that month, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, AIG's auditing firm, told AIG CEO Martin Sullivan that no one knew whether AIGFP's valuation of its derivatives portfolio was accurate. That process had been led by Casssano, who, it appears, had shut out the firm's internal accountant, Joseph St. Denis. (St. Denis would describe Cassano's high-handed behavior and unwillingness to allow AIGFP's transactions to be properly audited, in a letter (pdf) to congressional investigators sent the following year.)
- And yet, Cassano and Sullivan were continuing to paint a rosy picture for investors. At a December 5 presentation, Cassano declared: "It is very difficult to see how there can be any losses in these portfolios." Sullivan added: ""AIG has accurately identified all areas of exposure to the US residential-housing market ... we are confident in out markets and the reasonableness of our valuation methods." This presentation is currently being scrutinized by the Feds as evidence of possible fraud.
- In February 2008, AIG announced estimated losses of $11.5 billion, and that it had posted $5.3 billion in collateral.
- The following day, Sullivan announced that Cassano would step down, effective March 31. Only later, during a congressional investigation, did it come out that Cassano would get a $1 million a month consulting contract (the contract was cancelled in September 2008). It was also revealed that Cassano had made $43.6 million in salary and bonuses in 2006, and $24.2 million in 2007.
- That summer, it was reported that the Justice Department was investigating AIGFP for possible criminal fraud. The UK's Serious Fraud Office would later announced its own probe.
- In September 2008, AIG executives learned that the ratings agencies planned to downgrade the company's rating again. That would trigger more collateral calls, which AIG knew it couldn't begin to cover. Desperate negotiations to keep the company afloat -- including a possible $75 billion bridge loan from Goldman and JP Morgan, both major counter-parties on the credit default swaps -- ensued. Tim Geithner, then the head of the New York fed, called in. But in the following days, it became clear that AIG's level of exposure to its credit default swap losses was higher than anyone had yet understood. On Sept 16, the Federal Reserve Board, announced that it would take a nearly 80 percent equity stake in AIG -- effectively taking over the firm -- and would provide an $85 billion "loan".
- In October 2008, Gerry Pasciucco, a vice chair at Morgan Stanley, was brought in to wind down AIGFP. The unit, Pasciucco found, had $2.7 trillion worth of swap contracts and positions, and 50,000 outstanding trades with 2000 different firms, and 450 employees in six offices around the world.
- In March 2009, amid outrage over multi-million dollar bonuses for those employees, AIGFP would post armed guards outside Wilton headquarters.
* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.
Too big to fail; too rich? WOW! It kinda makes the case against both, central government planning and globalization as well. And what's up with the stock market? I seem to remember Iraq's Stock Exchange going through the roof just before the U. S. led invasion.
John, this is a bit off-topic, but I was eagerly awaiting your segment with John Taylor yesterday about how the government caused the whole financial crisis. There may have been some glitch on the east coast feed because it sounded like your voice was overlaid on your interview and the interview itself had to do Israel and Hamas. Is there a download for your Taylor interview or did it unfortunately get cancelled? If cancelled, can you please reschedule him for next time?
BTW the segments with Chang and Sternberg are awesome. I was amazed to learn that the U.S. does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Hearing Mr. Chang pronounce "Hillary Clinton" was worth the price of admission, and I will say in advance that he would be welcome to a good laugh over my Chinese, except all I know is She-she-ni and bukuchi.
Thanks.
Don;t let this story go, John. This one seems big. I hope it catches on.
I would venture to say that not many people realize this: A top AIG Exec salary has been $1 year and his bonus-
He quit AIG citing "broken promises", Liddy lack of support and betrayal, and the demonizing program practiced by Congress and press.
He will give his 785K after tax "bonus" to charity to keep the FedBusters from getting it and to keep it from being lost in AIG obscurity.
I read about that guy - bravo to him. Maybe the only thing he could have soft-pedaled a bit was the criticism of Liddy - need to walk a mile in Liddy's shoes and consider that Liddy had to say what he had to say to calm the angry mob. The mob seems calmed for the moment, cooler heads have prevailed (I'm starting to like the Senate again, despite John's appraisal of them as being generally worthless) ... now we're starting to see what the Senate is really for. But, still, bravo to that guy for coming out and returning the money and saying, "By the way - This whole thing reeks on high ..."
Agreeing with everything you said
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