I remember one time some environmentalist called out Arnold Schwarzenegger for owning like fifty SUVs, without stopping to realize that he can only actually be driving one at a time and therefore wasn't hurting the environment any more than anyone else.
But he pays people to drive the other forty nine around while he uses one.
Oh, I guess I kinda got caught up in what I want to think happened, and my wish became my reality. Misleading people doesn't make me happy. I apologize.
Well I can certainly accept believing something hard enough to the point where you ignore reality and replace it with your own!
The bailout just made me very angry. The financial industry bailout was terrible, but necessary. The damage done by letting Lehman Brothers collapse was proof enough that if the entire industry went down we'd be fucked. Not that this is a good thing; the people responsible for this mess can all go burn in hell, but we need their companies alive for our sakes.
What we should've done with the auto bailout is give two companies a little cash, and let one of them die completely, so we can see what kind of damage it would do. My vote would be for Chrysler, because I hate the CEO, Robert Nardelli. He used to be the CEO of Home Depot a couple years back, and after fucking it up for a few years, he left the company with a $210,000,000 severance package, which is ridiculously high even for golden parachutes. He's a douche.
I would agree with the choice of Chrysler, because they not only seem like the smallest producers of the three but seem to be in the most trouble, so their death would be fairly quick and painless. Plus, if Chrysler went down, other companies could buy it and use the plants to increase their car output once demand increases, which it will, sometime.
If you're only giving two companies money, give it to GM and Chrysler. Ford said that they'll probably be able to scrape through, as long as the other two stay in business. If the other two fall, Ford said they'll probably fall with them because of all the parts distributors that will go out.
For those of you who haven't been following, AIG (the biggest bailout taker of them all and theoretically the biggest financial neutron bomb if it goes under) has shelled out $165 million in executive bonuses this year, despite the fact it is currently running on a whopping $180,000,000,000 of tax dollars.
These bonuses were contractual and legally binding, negotiated before the crisis hit. If they did not pay out the bonuses, the executives could theoretically sue the company, requiring the company to pay double for being late, plus millions more in legal fees.
However, Congress and the rest of the public are (rightly) pissed off.
(CNN) -- Two key senators Tuesday announced a plan to impose a hefty tax on retention bonuses paid to executives of companies that received federal bailout money or in which the United States has an equity interest.
Sens. Max Baucus, D-Montana, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa -- the chairman and top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee -- said companies would not be allowed to restructure the payments to those executives through deferred compensation to avoid the tax.
The senators plan comes after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo confirmed in a letter to Congress that this year AIG paid 73 employees bonuses of more than $1 million each.
Cuomo also wrote that 11 of the employees no longer work for the company. The largest bonus paid was $6.4 million; seven other people also received more than $4 million each.
"Until we obtain the names of these individuals, it is impossible to determine when and why they left the firm and how it is that they received these payments," Cuomo wrote to a congressional committee.
Grassley and Baucus said all retention bonuses would be subject to a 35 percent excise tax for excessive compensation to be paid by the company and an additional 35 percent tax to be paid by the individual.
All other non-retention bonuses more than $50,000 would be subject to the same tax, the senators said.
Earlier today, New York Sen. Charles Schumer condemned the large bonuses.
"My colleagues and I are sending a letter to [AIG CEO Edward] Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell the employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them," Schumer said on the Senate floor. "Because if they don't, we plan to tax virtually all of [the money] ... so it is returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers."
AIG has been under fire for awarding seven-figure bonuses to employees while being kept afloat by more than $170 billion from the U.S. government's financial bailout.
The company insists the payouts are needed to keep talented executives on the payroll, but public anger over the moves has prompted Congress and the Obama administration to seek ways to reclaim the money.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on the Senate floor Tuesday that the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee would pursue a legislative fix in such a way that the "recipients of those bonuses will not be able to keep all their money -- and that's an understatement."
The special-tax idea was first floated Monday by Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
"We have a right to tax," the Connecticut Democrat told CNN. "You could write a tax provision that's narrowly crafted only to the people receiving bonuses."
At an unrelated hearing Tuesday at which IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman was testifying, Baucus asked the nation's top tax official, "What's the highest excise tax we can impose that's sustainable in court?"
Shulman did not respond directly, but Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, chimed in to suggest the tax could be as high as "90 percent."
President Obama on Monday expressed dismay and anger over the bonuses to executives at AIG.
"This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," Obama told politicians and reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where he and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner were unveiling a package to aid the nation's small businesses.
Obama said he will attempt to block bonuses for AIG, payments he described as an "outrage."
Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. I mean, how do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?"
Obama was referring to the bonuses paid to traders in AIG's financial products division, the tiny group of people who crafted complicated deals that contributed to the shaking of the world's economic foundations.
The president said he asked Geithner to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole." Obama said he would work with Congress to change the laws so that such a situation cannot happen again.
The president spared Liddy from criticism, saying he got the job "after the contracts that led to these bonuses were agreed to last year."
But he said the impropriety of the bonuses goes beyond economics. "It's about our fundamental values," he said.
Under pressure from the Treasury, AIG scaled back the bonus plans and pledged to reduce 2009 bonuses -- or "retention payments" -- by at least 30 percent. That has done little to temper outrage over the initial plan, however.
In the House, Democrats are trying to shame AIG executives into forgoing the bonuses. They're also investigating possible legal avenues Congress can take to force the company to return money used for bonuses, a House Democratic leadership aide and a House Financial Services Committee aide said Monday.
The committee is trying to determine whether Congress can force AIG to renegotiate the bonuses, which the company says it is legally required to give employees under contracts negotiated before the company received its first infusion of bailout dollars in September, according to the committee aide.
Both aides said it is unclear what authority Congress might have to force AIG to take back the bonuses.
Liddy will face intense questioning about the bonuses when he testifies Wednesday before the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets.
There was! He was the Republican senator from my homestate of Iowa.
The really scary thing is that people are not necessarily disagreeing with him. Under normal conditions it would be near political suicide for a politician to actually suggest someone kill themselves. But the public opinion is changing. People are growing more and more discontent, and there very well may be a need for blood if this continues.
A wave of popular anger over the $165 million (£118 million) in bonuses received by executives of American International Group (AIG) is threatening to engulf the insurance company and cause deep damage to President Obama’s infant Administration.
Armed guards have been stationed outside the Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products (AIGFP), where death threats have been pouring in and some employees have resigned or have refused to turn up for work.
Yesterday it emerged that 11 AIG workers who had received retention bonuses of $1 million or more had already left the company, stoking the anger on Capitol Hill, where Congress was threatening to introduce taxes to claw back the $165 million bonus payment to 400 staff at the division that caused its near-collapse.
Senators Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, the Democratic chairman and the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, proposed a 70 per cent tax on bonuses for executives at companies that received money from the $700 billion financial bailout package, which is designed to target AIG.
Democratic senators have vowed to pass legislation within 24 hours taxing the bonuses at 91 per cent. In the House of Representatives, Democrats introduced a bill to tax at 100 per cent bonuses of more than $100,000 granted by companies propped up by taxpayers.
The Internal Revenue Service taxes bonuses of less than $1 million at 25 per cent and those of more than $1 million at 35 per cent.
Last night it emerged that Senator Chris Dodd, who is proposing the AIG bonuses tax, took a $100,000 donation from the insurer for his election campaign.
Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney-general, has used subpoenas to discover that the company paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 executives, who stayed at AIG to help it to unwind its $1,600 billion portfolio of credit default swaps. Of these 73, 11 have already left. In a letter yesterday, Mr Cuomo said that the 11 workers who had left the company included one individual who received a $4.6 million payment. He wrote to Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, to say that seven had received more than $4 million each — a larger amount than the stricken insurer had previously indicated — while the top ten were paid a combined $42 million.
“AIG made more than 73 millionaires in the unit, which lost so much money that it brought the firm to its knees, forcing a taxpayer bailout,” he wrote. “Something is deeply wrong with this outcome. I hope the committee will address it head on.” He said that it was unclear when or how they left the company or why the bonuses were paid. AIG declined to comment.
Edward Liddy, who was appointed chairman and chief executive last September after AIG’s first government bailout, is due to appear before Mr Frank’s committee today.
Responding to requests last week by Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, to halt or cut the bonuses, Mr Liddy said that AIG was powerless to change the bonuses, which were part of a $450 million compensation pool set aside in early 2008 before it received government assistance. AIG told Mr Cuomo that the money had been distributed last Friday.
Pressure is growing on Mr Geithner. Mr Obama’s spokesman was forced to say that the President had complete confidence in his Treasury Secretary.
Mr Grassley went several steps further in expressing his anger: “The first thing that would make me feel a little better toward them [would be] if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say ‘I’m sorry’ and then either do one of two things; resign or go commit suicide.”
OMG socialism did not work in the USSR, why do people think it would work in America? See what it leads to? Division of the classes. Fear. Anger. HATRED. ARGH.
Comments
But he pays people to drive the other forty nine around while he uses one.
But whores...
Whoa whoa whoa, how the hell did I miss this?
You're very wrong Voltage. The bailout was passed, and we're forking over $17.4 billion in taxpayer dollars to help.
The bailout just made me very angry. The financial industry bailout was terrible, but necessary. The damage done by letting Lehman Brothers collapse was proof enough that if the entire industry went down we'd be fucked. Not that this is a good thing; the people responsible for this mess can all go burn in hell, but we need their companies alive for our sakes.
What we should've done with the auto bailout is give two companies a little cash, and let one of them die completely, so we can see what kind of damage it would do. My vote would be for Chrysler, because I hate the CEO, Robert Nardelli. He used to be the CEO of Home Depot a couple years back, and after fucking it up for a few years, he left the company with a $210,000,000 severance package, which is ridiculously high even for golden parachutes. He's a douche.
These bonuses were contractual and legally binding, negotiated before the crisis hit. If they did not pay out the bonuses, the executives could theoretically sue the company, requiring the company to pay double for being late, plus millions more in legal fees.
However, Congress and the rest of the public are (rightly) pissed off.
Senators announce plan to tax bonuses
The really scary thing is that people are not necessarily disagreeing with him. Under normal conditions it would be near political suicide for a politician to actually suggest someone kill themselves. But the public opinion is changing. People are growing more and more discontent, and there very well may be a need for blood if this continues.
Armed guards at AIG offices after death threats over bonuses
The storm is brewing...
Edit: Certain mods wield just enough awesome. I look foolish by not heeding their benevolent guidance.