I am so tired of these "holier than thou" politicians. From the president and "don't blame me" congressional leaders (Frank, Dodd, and et al) saying that they are appalled by the bonus that AIG has given to its' employees.First off, these employees had contracts dictating that they were due these bonuses. What is the president and congress want to do? Re-write and/or ignore legally binding contracts?
Well, in short, YES! They want to do this with AIG and in bankruptcy court (The Cramdown Bill) with allowing BK Trustees and judges to arbitrarily change people's mortgages (i.e. contract) between the lender and the borrowers. So, this is no big surprise.
But, the surprise is that Obama and Geithner KNEW about them BEFORE the bailout in September!!!! These bonuses were from contracts in April of 2008; and, Geithner was the architect of THE BAILOUT!!!
Second, Schumer, et al, want to take ALL of this money back. They want to confiscate this money, which was legally earned, from the recipients. Now, you can say that AIG received money from the feds.
But, in the rush to pass the TARP bill in September, the feds did not put ANY restrictions on it!!! Well, when you do not put any restrictions on the money, AIG could do anything that they wanted, including paying bonuses and making payments to foreign banks.
Obama, Geithner, Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, et al, only have themselves to blame! This is what happens when you rush to over correct the market and throw bad money after bad decisions.
As the old saying goes, "garbage in....garbage out".
