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March 17, 2009
More AIG Bonuses Drama

Paul Kedrosky has some Fun with AIG Bonuses. He lists some recipient groups of bonuses at AIG and this one sticks out:

Eleven of the individuals who received "retention" bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million.

Unfortunately I wasn't one of those eleven. If I were I now would probaqbly invest that "retention" bonus in buying call options on pitchfork producers.

Then again there may be better opportunities. As I pointed out this whole AIG bonuses drama is only a diversion that keeps the public away from talking about the multi-trillion looting scheme these guys are planing to implement with TALF 2.0. Maybe I should invest in that?

Posted by b on March 17, 2009 at 21:16 UTC | Permalink
Comments

I recall during the Dem primaries that there were bloggers concerned about the actual seed money for Obama’s run coming from the Big Money guys on Wall St and in hedge funds. Some peole wondered why they would pick a relative unknown senator, no matter how good his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Some wondered whether they saw him as the guy in the White House who could give them a safe house in the coming financial storms (which were beginning to surface during the Dem primaries).

Posted by: jawbone | Mar 17 2009 22:16 utc | 1

Borrow money to buy crap, keep the money, return the crap! Count me in.

Posted by: …—… | Mar 17 2009 23:25 utc | 2

We’ve decided that the “bonuses” are hush money. The much bigger ongoing scam is the payoff (of our $$)to default swap bettors who knew it was all a scam in the first place.
Also, you should see Alex Jones’ new movie “Obama Deception” for some good investigation into our new puppet-pres and how he is a tool of the Global Keepers.

Posted by: rapt | Mar 17 2009 23:33 utc | 3

Meanwhile, and while the looting in the trillions continues unabated…
Better pour yourself a stiff drink before venturing on…
Et tu, Obama? Open Government Suffers Another Blow

secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
Secret intellectual property treaty could profoundly change life on the Internet
A government cannot be held accountable if there is a cloak of secrecy around its core deliberations and citizens are excluded from the process. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was supposedly about changing all that. Obama declared that only transparency could restore the citizen trust in government – a trust that the Bush administration had systematically abused.
So what gives with the Obama administration’s refusal to share the most basic documents about a pending intellectual property treaty that are widely available among corporate lobbyists in Europe, Japan and the United States?
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, may sound arcane, and certainly its corporate champions must wish to make it seem boring and obscure. But in fact, the misleadingly named treaty could dramatically alter the Internet by allowing the film, music, publishing and other industries to aggressively enforce their IP rights, as they broadly construe them, at the expense of citizens, consumers and creators. All this would be achieved through secret deliberations — an international version of the smoke-filled room: another brazen disenfranchisement of citizens and trampling of democratic norms.
No official version of the proposed treaty has been released, but it is known that it seeks to set forth standards for enforcing cases of alleged copyright and patent infringement. The treaty also seeks to provide legal authority for the surveillance of Internet file transfers and searches of personal property. Read more about ACTA here and here.
Not only is the Obama administration quietly endorsing some of the Bush principles of executive power (see Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com), it is endorsing the kind of backchannel policymaking that Cheney and Rumsfeld made standard operating procedure during the Bush years. The ACTA treaty is moving ahead outside of conventional venues for policymaking. It is not occurring at the World Intellectual Property Organization and World Trade Organization, where some modicum of openness would prevail. Rather, it is being negotiated through a kind of private network of, by and for invited corporate insiders. (It is perversely amusing that the new process bypasses WIPO and WTO, which, in their earlier guises, also functioned as stealth “work-arounds” to avoid Congress and other open, democratic forums).
Why all the secrecy about a treaty that seeks to fight “counterfeiting”? It is hard to know for sure because the U.S. Trade Representative’s office has released so little information. Among many public interest critics, it is suspected that ACTA is intended to be a Trojan horse – a way to smuggle in all sorts of new and expansive powers for IP industries that would be quickly rejected if subjected to open, democratic deliberation.
For example, the definition of “counterfeit goods” is vague and amorphous, and seemingly could apply to all sorts of unauthorized uses of a work, even if they are currently legal under U.S. law, such as fair use of a copyrighted work. Similarly, Internet Service providers, who currently have no obligations to police their Internet traffic for copyright-infringing works (thanks to a “safe harbor” clause in U.S. law), might be legally compelled to become copyright police for the film and music industries. Imagine the RIAA campaign against file-sharers on steroids.
ISPs could also be required to disclose personal information about Internet users, with none of the due process or judicial oversight that ought to govern such surveillance and disclosure. It is also suspected that the new treaty text would step up the penalties for violations of IP law. Needless to say, such powers would jeopardize the civic freedoms of the Internet and profoundly change its basic character.
So is the Obama Administration cynical, hypocritical or just inept in its implementation of “transparency” in government? On his first day in office, President Obama issued a memorandum, “Transparency and Open Government,” which directed the heads of all executive departments and agencies to function with maximum transparency and public participation. Obama declared:
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
Yet here we have the White House Office of U.S. Trade Representative declaring that the terms of the proposed IP treaty are essentially a state secret and that backchannel policymaking, insulated from any public scrutiny, is fine, just fine. Info-warrior James Love writes in a blog post that his group, Knowledge Ecology International, has requested seven specific documents that contain the proposed text for that ACTA treaty under the Freedom of Information Act. In response to Love’s FOI request, the White House Office of the U.S. Trade Representative refused to release the ACTA documents. It stated that the information about the treaty “is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.” So intellectual property has risen to the status of “national security”!
What makes this determination so galling is that fact that proposed language for the treaty is widely available to corporate lobbyists.

More at the link w/embedded links and well worth finishing.
One final snip:
“But they are a secret from you, the public.”
However, there is a list of cleared-advisors, perhaps for a bonus, they would share some of the protocol?
Remember the late Carlin, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” Let alone, one of the eleven…lol

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 17 2009 23:34 utc | 4

More people who ain’t in it:
Contract? What contract?

Posted by: biklett | Mar 18 2009 0:28 utc | 5

I don’t agree with Mish, by the way.

Posted by: biklett | Mar 18 2009 0:31 utc | 6

Thanks Uncle $cam,
I went to look at the list of advisors on this Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – no surprise – all big corporate industry and lobby people. Nobody there representing the American public. Hey, like Douglas Adams said in Hitchhikers Guide, these people will be first against the wall when the revolution comes!

Posted by: Rick | Mar 18 2009 2:42 utc | 7

Listening to this now, but thought it may interest some here:
Peter Dale Scott talks to Republicans – Saving American Politics
Summary: PD Scott talks about income disparity – should be limited to a maximum of 20 to 1. On Jan. 27, 2009, in front of an audience of Republicans, Scott explained in great detail the necessity to construct future bail-outs to diminish that gap for the sake of democracy. This is a lucid analysis and a well researched guideline for all who want to influence future financial policies.
Direct link: here.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 18 2009 3:32 utc | 8

Oh, and btw, I can’t find it, yet, but I remember blogging about it at the time, and how Pre-911 Fortune 500 Corporate heads were given inside info on an up and coming terrorist attack…
The FBI Deputizes Business
By Matthew Rothschild, March 2008 Issue
The FBI Deputizes Business

23,000 Businesspeople Get Threat Info from FBI Before Public. In Turn, They Supply Tips to FBI. Two Members of Private Sector Group Say They Have “Shoot to Kill” Permission in Emergency. These are the astonishing findings in Rothschild’s cover story of the March issue of The Progressive.Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 18 2009 3:49 utc | 9

Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld make more in seven minutes off Defense fraud,
than all of the AIG hedge fund quants made since the bubble burst in 2000.
The only difference between Bernie Madoff and Warren Buffett is BRK-B <-- ! Know'm sayin'. AIG as "shiney object", you tools. They're mesmerizing you.

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 18 2009 4:03 utc | 10

And by all means lets pay a couple million Federal and State
“workers” a couple TRILLION a year, not counting the TRILLION
in unfunded pension benefits for life they all have, earning
10% taken out of your public services and property taxes, to
tell us on the media how awful those ‘greedheads’ are at AIG.
Every one of those Federal and State “workers”, who now have
zero capital programs and are diverting operations and even
entitlements into staff salaries and benefits, and costing US
more, on average, than any one of those AIG hedge fund quants.
Boy, do Politburo wonks love to wag their finger on the dole!!

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 18 2009 4:14 utc | 11

Yves Smith has put up a graphic I had to show the original Uncle.

Posted by: PeeDee | Mar 18 2009 4:45 utc | 12

It’s not the government that wants your money – the AIG scam should prove that. The government is just a feckless bag man making a collection for the real power. Money and Army. The government is just a pathetic little gopher in a grand blackmail scheme.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 18 2009 5:46 utc | 13

Numerian has some good background on the AIG bonuses. His conclusion though is frightening:
The Real Story Behind Those Greedy AIG Bankers

I have thought all along that someday the strains of trying to manage the banking business
via government are going to be too much, because the objectives are too dissimilar and occasionally the parties are in diametrical opposition. This is one of those occasions. We have also learned throughout this financial crisis that things which seem very unlikely to happen do occur. It seems unlikely that many AIG employees will be leaving, or that massive default claims against AIG and the U.S. will occur, but stranger things have happened in a financial system that is hypersensitive and hanging together by a thread.
The global financial system is therefore capable of blowing up at any time, beyond anything we have seen or imagined so far. As is often the case, it only takes what appears to be an inconsequential event to light the match.
Is this that event?

Posted by: b | Mar 18 2009 9:08 utc | 14

Saw this about a month ago, but didn’t pursue it because I didn’t think It would go anywhere, didn’t think it could be done, nor had I seen it being discussed anywhere else, but evidently, it’s a go, and about to ramp up…
ISP filtering starts in Australia
Then today, saw this…
Australia: Banned Hyperlinks Could Cost You $11,000 a Day
“ The first phase of Australia’s controversial Internet filters were put in place today, with the Australian government announcing that six ISPs will take part in a six-week pilot. The plan reportedly includes a filter blocking a list of Government-blacklisted sites, and an optional adult content filter, and the government has said it hasn’t ruled out the possibility of filtering BitTorrent traffic. The filters have been widely criticized by privacy groups and Internet users, and people have previously even taken to the streets to protest. While Christian groups support the plan, others say filters could slow down Internet speeds, that they don’t work, and that the plan amounts to censorship of the Internet. At this stage the filters are only a pilot, and Australia’s largest ISP, Telstra, is not taking part. But if the $125.8 million being spent by the Australian Government on cyber-safety is any indication, it’s a sign of things to come.”
Are we looking at the pilot program for my above ACTA links? Is this why we haven’t heard from Debs is dead?
p.s. since when did you have to have a name in the name field to preview? Yet more changes to typepad?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 18 2009 10:34 utc | 15

Also see…
Conroy making valiant effort, then mentions BitTorrent
Porn filters could cause 22% drop in speed
More, “for the children” bullshit…
I would have thought the tubes would be on fire with this going on, but haven’t much talk at all, especially with something like this, that could effect us all.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 18 2009 10:49 utc | 16

IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’

The International Monetary Fund is poised to embark on what analysts have described as “global quantitative easing” by printing billions of dollars worth of a global “super-currency” in an unprecedented new effort to address the economic crisis.

on the British behemoth Barclay’s, clearly the dodgiest bank in the uk and naturally up to its eyeballs with AIG asa well,
Barclays – they’ve gagged the Guardian – are they mad?
The Guardian has reported:
Barclays Bank obtained a court order early today banning the Guardian from publishing documents which showed how the bank set up companies to avoid hundreds of millions of pounds in tax.
The gagging order was granted by Mr Justice Ouseley after Barclays complained about seven documents on the Guardian’s website which had been leaked to the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader, Vince Cable.
The internal Barclays memos – leaked by a Barclays whistleblower – showed executives from SCM, Barclays’s structured capital markets division, seeking approval for a 2007 plan to sink more than $16bn (£11.4bn) into US loans.
Tax benefits were to be generated by an elaborate circuit of Cayman islands companies, US partnerships and Luxembourg subsidiaries.
The documents had been leaked to Cable by a former employee of the bank, who wrote a long account of how the bank works.
They also note:
Barclays’s lawyers, Freshfields, worked into the early hours to force the Guardian to remove the documents from the website. They argued that the documents were the property of Barclays and could only have been leaked by someone who acquired them wrongfully and in breach of confidentiality agreements.
Note: See how the ACTA could work?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 18 2009 11:02 utc | 17

Elliot Spitzer chimes in.

Posted by: D. Mathews | Mar 18 2009 13:08 utc | 18

b;
Don’t you think that because financial derivatives were prevented from being regulated by the federal government (thanks to Summers, Rubin, and Greenspan banding together with Republicans in Congress, led by Phil Gramm), it’s gonna be hard as hell to nail crooks in the derivatives industry for securities fraud?

Posted by: Cynthia | Mar 18 2009 14:45 utc | 19

The main stream media repeatedly reports on the populist rage at the AIG bonuses and Congressional taxing the AIG bonuses at 100%.
Proof that this is simply a smokescreen:
None of the reports ever mention that the derivative traders work in England or that a 80% tax rate on all incomes over a million dollars and closing offshore banking accounts would be more effective in funding the federal government and would mitigate most adverse impacts of granting Wall Street bonuses.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, government pensions disappeared. Right now the only security in the USA is a government job and Social Security. The next year will tell if America is looted just like Russia and the life expectancy plunges also in the USA as a result.

Posted by: VietnamVet | Mar 18 2009 15:27 utc | 20

@Cynthia – Don’t you think that because financial derivatives were prevented from being regulated by the federal government (…), it’s gonna be hard as hell to nail crooks in the derivatives industry for securities fraud?
Al Capone was jailed on a tax issues if I remember that correctly. There is always something one can find in the books of those banks and hedge funds. For example AIG, which was technically bankrupt before the government stepped in, payed out bonuses at that time too. That is indeed punishable fraud. There is always something a good prosecutor can pick up …

Posted by: b | Mar 18 2009 16:20 utc | 21

Michael Hudson at Counterpunch:

Until finally, on Sunday night, March 15, the government finally released the details. They were indeed highly embarrassing. The largest recipient turned out to be just what earlier financial reports had rumored: Paulson’s own firm, Goldman Sachs, headed the list. It was owed $13 billion in counterparty claims. Here’s the picture that’s emerging. Last September, Treasury Secretary Paulson, from Goldman Sachs, drew up a terse 3-page memo outlining his bailout proposal. The plan specified that whatever he and other Treasury officials did (thus including his subordinates, also from Goldman Sachs), could not be challenged legally or undone, much less prosecuted. This condition enraged Congress, which rejected the bailout in its first incarnation.
It now looks as if Paulson had good reason to put in a fatal legal clause blocking any clawback of funds given by the Treasury to AIG’s counterparties. This is where public outrage should be focused.

Posted by: catlady | Mar 18 2009 16:31 utc | 22

Scribd puts on line the draft of the AIG risk and bankruptcy report. (i.e. produced by AIG, though the document is not sourced, and how it was obtained is not detailed, so make up yr own minds.)
Arrogant, alarmist document; but lots of numbers and facts
link, Feb. 09
———–
From 2002 to 2008, the five largest Wall Street firms paid $190 billion in bonuses while earning $76 billion in profits. Last year, they had a combined net loss of $25 billion but paid bonuses of $26 billion.
This quote comes from ‘The big picture’, about 3/4 of the way down in a long piece entitled Slow Growth and Deflation. Ritholtz
If these numbers are right, they eloquently illustrate that the ‘finance industry’ is nothing but global racketeering, sanctioned and supported (or wink wink ignored) by Gvmt actors who get their slice of the pie. Particularly evident in the US, where ‘contributions’ and ‘lobbying’ completely corrupt the democratic aspects of a Constitutional Republic.
The final state of affairs is a Gvmt. sandwiched between two powers: finance, or big money-makers overall, and the media.
The Gvmt. potentially can control both, it does have quite some power; at the same time, in a ‘democracy’ with elections run on hype and image, it is completely dependent on the media; and on ‘finance’ to keep the merry go round going. Therefore it is reduced to accepting hand-greasing, caving in to blackmail and pressure, making concessions, giving in to demands, etc. just to survive.
Crumbling institutions with power will go to extremes to endure, and are encouraged to do so by those who may profit and love having a middle man who is amenable, pliable, and can carry the can.

Posted by: Tangerine | Mar 18 2009 17:28 utc | 23

A contrarian view.

Posted by: D. Mathews | Mar 18 2009 17:36 utc | 24

I normally wouldn’t thank you for posting a link to Kosland, D.Mathews, but the comment thread was a very interesting read, so thank you.
One thing I really can’t stand is the buzz words that every shit-filled pundit pick up, like Zombie Banks. Todays word: pitchfork.

Posted by: Lizard | Mar 18 2009 19:12 utc | 25

Thats about right Tangerine, and in a self fulfilling manner it perpetuates widespread mistrust of government – which in itself allows the cycle to continue to loot. In essence we’ve evolved into a kind of neo-feudalism.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 18 2009 19:16 utc | 26

The Dkos diary is total bullshit. WE DO NOT HAVE A LIQUDITY CRISIS!
We have a solvency crisis. Banks are bankrupt, consumers are bankrupt. Nobody gives the money fo that reason, not because money is not available.

Posted by: b | Mar 18 2009 19:28 utc | 27

The Dkos diary is total bullshit
yes, but the comment thread was an enlightening read, mostly because it highlights how difficult just having the right conversation actually is.
anyway, a country that guts its manufacturing and bestows its financial sector with the wizardry to conjure wealth in an unregulated shadow world is in big trouble.

Posted by: Lizard | Mar 18 2009 20:28 utc | 28

Lunacy: Fed adds trillion dollars to economic fight
Not quoting. Fed buys up a trillion++ of Treasuries and Mortgages to lower interest rates in the hope to revive another bubble.
I doubt they will succeed (well we already have a treasury bubble if that bust interest rates go through the roof). So the likely outcome is high inflation.
There is no liquidity crisis, there is a solvency crisis. Clean up the banks and things will return to normal. Pumping in money like the Fed tries will not help at all.

Posted by: b | Mar 18 2009 20:29 utc | 29

“We own our government, in effect, and we’re not asking that these automatic Congressional and Public Employee bonuses be rescinded because we have paid trillion in tax money to the government every year. I believe we are saying to the Executive and the Congress, we do not think … we should have paid bonuses to government officials and public employees who made mistakes who were incompetent,” said Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.”
Chinese are quietly liquidating ~$1000 BILLION in Treasuries and going on a tear around the globe, as 2010 balloon defaults shower distressed R/E like black rain.
Talk about ‘Shek-in-ah’, Y.A.S.N.Y.! Let the Great Liquidation Tsunami begin!

Posted by: Better Barney | Mar 18 2009 22:49 utc | 30

How long will Geithner be his in office? One month? Two month?
A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments

While the American International Group comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens.
A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.

Posted by: b | Mar 20 2009 5:43 utc | 31

A.D. 1125 . In this year sent the King Henry, before Christmas,
from Normandy to England, and bade that all the mint-men that
were in England should be mutilated in their limbs; that was,
that they should lose each of them the right hand, and their
testicles beneath. This was because the man that had a pound
could not lay out a penny at a market. And the Bishop Roger of
Salisbury sent over all England, and bade them all that they
should come to Winchester at Christmas. When they came thither,
then were they taken one by one, and deprived each of the right
hand and the testicles beneath. All this was done within the
twelfth-night. And that was all in perfect justice, because that
they had undone all the land with the great quantity of base coin
that they all bought.
Anglo Saxon Chronicle
Translation by Rev. James Ingram (London, 1823).

Posted by: Shakib | Mar 20 2009 11:35 utc | 32

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