Important: Look Beyond the Bogus Smoke Screen
Excerpt:
I ask you now to turn away from the bogus bonus smokescreen over $165 million in taxpayer-backed compensation packages for AIG employees. It is a pittance compared to the gargantuan spending spree happening right under our noses. The AIG bonus price tag amounts to one-tenth of one percent of the total AIG giveaway ($85 billion in September, $37.8 billion in October; $40 billion in November; $30 billion in early March, which took place with the assent of a Republican administration, a Democrat administration, and the congressional leadership of both parties.
Taxpayers might be less skeptical of the born-again guardians of fiscal responsibility if these evangelists were actually practicing what they preached. While the Obama administration now issues impassioned calls to stop rewarding failure, they moved Thursday to dump another $5 billion into the failing auto industry. That’s on top of the Thursday announcement by the Federal Reserve to print up $1 trillion to buy up Treasury bonds and mortgage securities sold by the government — that no one else wants to buy.
Financial blogger Barry Ritholtz tallied up $8.5 trillion in bailout costs by December 2008 between the Federal Reserve, FDIC, Treasury, and Federal Housing Administration rescues (not including the $5.2 trillion in Fannie/Freddie portfolios that the US taxpayer is now also explicitly responsible for.) Then there’s the (at least) $50 billion proposed by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in February to bail out home owners and lenders who made bad home loan decisions, which would be just a small sliver of the $2.5 trillion he wants to spend on the next big banking bailout, which would draw on the second $350 billion of the TARP package over which an increasing number of Chicken Little lawmakers are having buyer’s remorse.
Read the rest from Michelle Malkin’s syndicated column today!
True, the bonus money for AIG, Fannie and Feddie are a drop in the bucket compared to the Trillion or so dollars spent on TARP and ERP. However, Geithner, the sitting Fed Chair at the time, along with execs from AIG and others, sat there and drafted into the bailout plans these bonuses. Franks and Dodds both knew what was going on back in mid 08. To sit there this past week (of 20 Mar 09) and say non of them knew anything about this is pure nonsense. It is the priniple of the matter, that these people, who lost billions of investors hard earned money because of greedy and hi risk, get a dime of our tax money in the first place is just wrong. And the notion of “well how can we retain them in this climate if we don’t” is also pure nonsense.
They are lucky they even have jobs at all. Join the few million Americans, who don’t have jobs.
Giethner, Franks and Dodds should all be unmeployed. This has been one monumental blunder from the get go. Does anyone really think we are going to see the money come back to the Federal Gov’t? Has that ever happend befor? Don’t think so.