Following up on yesterday’s post — Stop AIG Bonuses!! — here’s a roundup of the latest news on the AIG scandal and some other corporate thievery going down, down, down.

As hired guards protect AIG execs at their offices; as death threats, angry calls and thousands of pissed off emails flood in; as politicians say AIG executives “should be fired,” “commit suicide,” win a “Nobel Prize for evil;” and as Obama’s talking oh so tough, the US taxpayers can suck it - the bonuses go out!!

Rage at AIG Swells As Bonuses Go Out
“Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products… Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn’t show up at all.

‘It’s a mob effect,’ one senior executive said. “It’s putting people’s lives in danger.”

‘It’s going to blow up,’ said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. “I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly.” [Continue Reading]

A.I.G. Bonuses Strike a Nerve Like Few Other Topics
“Some people are vengeful, calling for jail, public humiliation or even revolution over the decision by A.I.G. to award $165 million in bonuses to employees who were in part responsible for the insurance giant’s near collapse — though few go as far as Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who has suggested that company executives should ‘resign or go commit suicide.’” [Continue Reading]

White House Adviser: AIG Deserves ‘Nobel Prize For Evil’
“Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic advisers, said it’s ‘unbelievable’ that senior executives at bailout-beneficiary AIG will get $165 million in bonuses.

‘It’s almost like these guys should have gotten the Nobel Prize for evil,’ Goolsbee said. ‘The financial products division has come up with shenanigans that ended up costing the company and ultimately the American taxpayer billions upon billions of dollars.’” [Continue Reading]

The Sanctity of AIG’s Contracts
“Apparently, the supreme sanctity of employment contracts applies only to some types of employees but not others. Either way, the Obama administration’s claim that nothing could be done about the AIG bonuses because AIG has solid, sacred contractual commitments to pay them is, for so many reasons, absurd on its face.” [Continue Reading]

Why Are AIG’s Contracts Sacrosanct But Not Union Workers’ Contracts?
Of course, not all contracts are sacrosanct. When Detroit’s Big Three arrived in Washington last year to plead for federal bailout funds, the right wing demanded that the United Auto Workers ignore their contracts and accept “steep cuts in pay and benefits” — on top of the cuts they already shouldered in 2007. The UAW agreed to “make major concessions in its contracts,” acceding to most of the right’s demands [Continue Reading]

AIG’s turmoil depletes Obama’s political capital
“Anger over bonuses paid to AIG execs blows back on president, initiatives
President Obama’s apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

Politicians in both parties flocked to express outrage over $165 million in bonuses paid out to executives at the company, demanding answers from the president and swamping yesterday’s rollout of his efforts to spark lending to small businesses….

But reports about the latest AIG bonuses quickly undermined whatever political capital Obama has earned with his past efforts.” [Continue Reading]

Senate plans on introducing bill to claw back AIG bonuses
“Reacting to the pubic outrage over the news that executives responsible for AIG’s near collapse last year will be receiving millions in bonuses, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said legislation will be introduced this week to return some of the company’s bailout money to the Treasury Department.” [Continue Reading]

New bill would tax AIG bonuses at 100 percent
“The sponsor of the new bill, Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington), said Tuesday that ‘if we can’t kill the bonuses, we’ll tax the bonuses.’

‘American families shouldn’t be forced to reward these professional financial failures with extravagant bonuses that could buy fancy cars and yachts,’ Israel said in a statement. ‘AIG may not like it, but since they had to come to the federal government for help, the federal government now has a say in how they spend taxpayer money.’” [Continue Reading]

The Real AIG Scandal — By Eliot Spitzer
“It’s not the bonuses. It’s that AIG’s counterparties are getting paid back in full.

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG’s bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG’s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?…

The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.” [Continue Reading]

Loepp gets $727k bonus; Blue Cross executive compensation disclosed
“Top executives at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses in 2008 months before the state’s largest insurer announced layoffs and premium increases to policyholders…. Here’s a list of the executives who received bonuses:” [Continue Reading]

Citigroup CEO awarded $10.8 million
Citigroup Inc awarded Chief Executive Vikram Pandit $10.82 million of compensation in 2008, a year when the government propped up the bank with $45 billion of capital. [Continue Reading]

U.S. Injecting Billions Into Foreign Central Banks
“For more than a year, the U.S. Federal Reserve System has been increasingly acting as the world’s central bank, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign government treasuries in an effort to increase liquidity in those countries…. The program has so far gone unreported in the mainstream media and is a major expansion of Federal Reserve involvement in the global economy.” [Continue Reading]

To end on a lighter note:

Onion News $700 Billion Bailout Celebrated With Lavish $800 Billion Executive Party
GEORGE TOWN, CAYMAN ISLANDS—Amid the bleak backdrop of imminent economic collapse, worried observers got some good news last October when executives from the nation’s top 10 failing companies celebrated the historic $700 billion government bailout with an ultra- extravagant $800 billion party aimed at restoring confidence and bolstering their resolve. [Continue Reading]

Sign up for our email newsletter to keep up on the latest news.

And as always…

 Email This Post

---