Post by frankcor on Mar 19, 2009 14:07:40 GMT -5
I watched the replay of the testimony of Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG before a House panel last night on CSPAN. I was thunderstruck by the appalling ignorance and hypocracy of our representatives on both sides of the aisle as well as the flagrant lack of honesty in the reporting we are being spoonfed by the mainstream media.
Here are some of my observations:
What was perhaps the most appalling was how many times Mr. Liddy had to give the above answers over and over again as each 10 minutes, another stupid, lazy, sluggard congress critter waltzed into the hearing room and asked the same stupid ridiculous questions over and over again. They should all be taken out and horsewhipped.
Folks, you're being set up -- the anger at AIG is a classic misdirection play.
Here are some of my observations:
- Mr. Liddy agreed to come out of retirement (former CEO of Allstate) when asked to take over the helm of AIG after their former leadership was fired by Treasury last November. He is working for $1 per year and will receive no bonuses in 2009. No other top management at AIG will receive bonuses.
- All of the AIG Finacial Products (an AIG subsidiary that brought the entire company to the brink of bankruptcy) executives who were responsible for taking ridiculous risks in the mortgage derivatives trades were fired last year.
- When Mr. Liddy took over, AIG was exposed to $2.4-trillion in contracts that they had insured. Today that risk is down to $1.6-trillion, none of which is in mortgage-backed derivatives. In other words, the first round of bailouts actually worked. It removed the exposure to those extremely foolhardy contracts and saved the company from bankruptcy.
- The $165-million in bonuses that your media and representatives are telling you to be angry about were not performance bonuses -- they were retention bonuses. They were offered to the people who are working on divesting the company of the remaining $1.6-trillion in contracts. These are very complicated contracts (many are longer than 400 pages) and need to be managed every day or can cause huge additional losses. The people who manage these contracts were essentially told "Stay with AIG until your contracts are shrunk and then you'll be out of work." They were bribes to keep these experts working to reduce the taxpayers liability.
- Mr. Liddy says the congress can ask for the bonuses back and most employees will give the bonuses back, along with their resignations. And then we're all screwed.
What was perhaps the most appalling was how many times Mr. Liddy had to give the above answers over and over again as each 10 minutes, another stupid, lazy, sluggard congress critter waltzed into the hearing room and asked the same stupid ridiculous questions over and over again. They should all be taken out and horsewhipped.
Folks, you're being set up -- the anger at AIG is a classic misdirection play.
