Now that a mere $50 million of the $286 million already given out in AIG bonuses has been “returned,” it appears that the herd animals in the mainstream media are moving on. But… let’s not forget some of the important and underlying issues this scandal brought to light. Here is our Top Ten list of the Best in AIG Scandal Coverage:

#10) Daily Show Coverage
We start with the comical, but always informative, Daily Show:

The Notorious AIG

More Daily Show AIG coverage here.

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#9) AIG Drops $500k at Resort
Shortly after AIG received their first installment of bailout funds, they spent $500K at this lovely resort:

Rep. Elijah Cummings Questions AIG Execs on Resort Spending:

See Also: Why Help AIG?

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#8) The Big Takeover
By Matt Taibbi
“The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG…”

“The global economic crisis isn’t about money - it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.”

“The real question from here is whether the Obama administration is going to move to bring the financial system back to a place where sanity is restored and the general public can have a say in things or whether the new financial bureaucracy will remain obscure, secretive and hopelessly complex. It might not bode well that Geithner, Obama’s Treasury secretary, is one of the architects of the Paulson bailouts; as chief of the New York Fed, he helped orchestrate the Goldman-friendly AIG bailout and the secretive Maiden Lane facilities used to funnel funds to the dying company. Neither did it look good when Geithner — himself a protégé of notorious Goldman alum John Thain, the Merrill Lynch chief who paid out billions in bonuses after the state spent billions bailing out his firm — picked a former Goldman lobbyist named Mark Patterson to be his top aide. [Continue Reading]

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#7) The Sanctity of AIG’s Contracts
By Glenn Greenwald
“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]

See Also: 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]

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#6) NY Attorney General AIG Bonus Scandal Findings & Letters
“Thus, last week, 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. Something is deeply wrong with this outcome.” — NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

Andrew Cuomo wrote Barney Frank, the House Committee on Financial Services Chairman, to update him on his ongoing investigation into AIG bonuses. Among Cuomo’s many fascinating insights:

“The top recipient received more than $6.4 million;
The top seven bonus recipients received more than $4 million each;
The top ten bonus recipients received a combined $42 million;
22 individuals received bonuses of $2 million or more, and combined they received more than $72 million;
73 individuals received bonuses of $1 million or more; and
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;” [Continue Reading]

See Also: Andrew Cuomo writes to AIG demanding that they release the names of employees receiving bonuses… [Continue Reading]

See Also: This Man Is Jackpot Jimmy
Meet James Haas, one of AIG’s bigtime bonus babies. [Continue Reading]

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#5) AIG: Will We Solve the Underlying Problem?
By Lawrence Lessig
Few “people know is that AIG gave more than $9 million in campaign contributions to Congress — making OpenSecrets.org’s list of the Top 100 contributors of all time. AIG split its money evenly between those in both parties who could help them the most — especially those on key congressional committees that the public relied on to regulate financial corporations. The Number 1 lifetime recipient of AIG money? Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd, who received $281,000 (just edging out George W. Bush).” [Continue Reading]

See Also: Three AIG Bonus Villains Were Friends Of Senator Chris Dodd
All three AIG executives who were revealed to have received bailout bonuses by the New York Post today have been donors to Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. Dodd is a major beneficiary of the wealth of AIG employees, who have donated over $280,000 to Dodd over the years. [Continue Reading]

See Also: Obama Received $101,332 from AIG [Continue Reading]

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#4) Senate Quietly Stripped Measure Restricting Bonuses From Bailout Legislation
By John Byrne
A “provision that would have restricted companies receiving federal government bailout aid from paying bonuses was quietly stripped from a bill last month.

The measure, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), was removed by negotiators in a late-night, close door meeting. In the negotiations, senators agreed to limit executive compensation but decided to forgo barring excessive bonuses — in fact, they specifically exempted it. [Continue Reading]

See Also: How Timothy Geithner’s Bailout Plan Created the AIG Bonus Scandal [Continue Reading]

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#3) Is Timothy Geithner an Idiot, or Just Lying Through His Teeth?
By Jane Hamsher
“Geithner was lobbying heavily at the time of the stimulus bill conference for the insertion of language that made sure the AIG bonuses got paid out in full, on February 11. Which means that if he was doing so with knowledge of the existence of the bonus contracts, he was trying to make sure they got paid…

Elijah Cummings knew the details Paul Kanjorski knew the details, Ben Bernanke knew (and approved) the details. Geithner is either a complete idiot who doesn’t know what’s going on or he’s lying through his teeth.” [Continue Reading]

See Also: Rep. Elijah Cummings Questions Liddy on AIG

See Also: Elijah Cummings Knew About $1 Billion in AIG Bonuses for “Months” — Why Didn’t Timothy Geithner? [Continue Reading]

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#2) Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses
By Robert Scheer
“The bailout is a response to a banking crisis that resulted from the radical deregulation pushed by former Goldman Sachs honcho Robert Rubin when he was President Clinton’s treasury secretary. Another Goldman Sachs chairman-turned-treasury-secretary, Henry Paulson, in the Bush administration designed the trillion-dollar bank bailout that will go down as the greatest swindle in U.S. history. [Continue Reading]

See Also: Democracy Now! “Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses”: Veteran Journalist Robert Scheer on AIG Bonuses, the “Backdoor Bailout” and Why Obama Should Fire Geithner, Summers [Continue Reading]

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#1) 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]

See Also: Who’s Who on AIG’s List of Counterparties
Among the financial behemoths on the list are Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and several European banks [Continue Reading]

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