Matt Taibbi-I love you dude!!

Matt’s latest piece is a wonderful bitchslap of the AIG carpetbaggers. He is responding to the recent NYT OpEd by one of their employees…actually former employee. Executive VP Jake DeSantis. Jake was a big wig in the Financial Products division…you know, the one that created the credit default swaps bullshit. It’s a must read! Just a small tidbit:

Are we supposed to believe that Jake DeSantis knew nothing about Joe Cassano’s CDS deals? If your boss and the top guys in your firm were all making a killing selling anything at all — whether it was rubber kayaks, generic Levitra or credit default swaps — you really wouldn’t bother to find out what that thing they were selling was? You’d really just mind your own business, sit at your cubicle and put your faith in the guys up top to fill you in if there was something you needed to know?

This would be a believable claim for an employee of some other wing of AIG, a company with well over 100,000 employees. But DeSantis works for tiny, 377-person AIGFP, a unit that had only two offices — one in London and one in Greenwich, Conn.

And we’re talking about financial professionals, the most shameless group of tirelessly envious gossips ever to walk the face of the earth. The likelihood that Cassano would pull in $280 million for himself, and his equally greedy, hopelessly jealous employees wouldn’t know not only exactly how he made that money but every last ugly detail about his life — from what skank he’s sleeping with to what side of his trousers he hangs on — is almost zero.

I know plenty of people who work in this world, and I’ve met very few who didn’t hate with every cell in their bodies anyone in their own companies who made more money than they did or got bigger bonuses at Christmastime. Gossiping about each others’ bonuses, and bitching about each others’ compensation, is the national pastime for these people.

So forgive me if I don’t buy this story that poor Jake and his buddies didn’t know about Cassano’s CDS business.

Get em Matt!!! Bitchslap the living shit out of these punks. Taibbi is one of the best journalists out there..I can never get enough of him.

H/T to MPS and the Vanity Press for having this up on their sites.

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The bonuses…its all about the damn bonuses?

I am really tired of this subject. AIG was not the only financial company to reward failure. Lehman Bros did too. Hell, I would be willing to bet all if not most of the banks and financial houses did prior to putting their hand out for that corporate welfare check.

Timmy Geithner needs to set the record straight on what he knew and when. Chris Dodd needs to name the ‘administration official’ that told him to change the language in the stimulus bill from wiping out all bonuses to letting a few of them slide through.

So what did the folks in the House of Reps do today? Why they passed a bill that smells totally illegal and unconstitutional..it taxes anyone that received a bonus or will receive a bonus…to the tune of a 90% tax rate. Retroactive legislation is rarely legal…they should know that. It was pure unadulterated theater folks! From CNN:

The measure would tax individuals on any bonuses received in 2009 from companies getting $5 billion or more in money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Bonuses for people with incomes over $250,000 would be taxed at a 90 percent rate.

Yes we are outraged…but I think we are pissed at the wrong people…Timmy G and Benny Bernanke should be higher on our shit list than the folks that took the bonuses their companies were contractually obligated to pay.

Timmy has been on the side of the carpetbaggers since day one. Five bucks says he is the one that told Dodd to remove the section prohibiting bonuses.

And Bernanke knew about these fucking bonuses for months and never informed anyone in the new administration? WTF dude? He just moved up my shit list too.

Friggin carpetbaggers, and their friends in high places…kiss my brown ass. I hope all your names are released publically and you are shamed into returning them.

As for Benny and Timmy..they need to resign their posts…but they won’t. Obama can fire Timmy, but not Bernanke.

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A Buccaneer’s Arrogance

Edward M. Liddy grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, earned a bachelor’s degree from Catholic University of America in 1968 and a master’s in business administration from George Washington University in 1972. He then began a long career in corporate America, including stops at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, drug maker G.D. Searle & Co in Skokie, Illinois, and Allstate Corporation in Northbrook, Illinois.

During Edward Liddy’s apprenticeship in the buccaneering life he was exposed to the most influential teachers and lasting experiences. While at Searle, Liddy who was CFO worked for a CEO , Donald Rumsfeld, who has always epitomized the height of arrogance as demonstrated by a successful buccaneer. When he was at Allstate, Liddy presided over the company during and after hurricane Katrina, and Liddy observed first hand the effects of over exposure to risk and subsequent loss of trust when Allstate was faced with the massive losses suffered by homeowners in New Orleans, and Allstate subsequently canceled insurance policies and exited the business of insuring homeowners against casualty, lucrative as the business might have once been and could be.

He joined Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, a private equity firm operating in New York and London in 2008, and became a partner for a brief time, before being tapped for his latest expedition in the world of corporate insurance and finance.

Liddy who was a former director of Goldman Sachs (elected in 2003 when Goldman Sachs’ CEO was Henry Paulson, who would go on to be treasury secretary under George W. Bush), was then appointed as CEO of AIG after the ouster of Robert Willumstad by Paulson when the federal government seized AIG in June of 2008.

Throughout his apprenticeship, Edward Liddy was trained by the masters, and had plenty of practice in the art of separating the gullible from the coin of the realm. He became a wizard of the sorcery of making other people’s money in to greater treasure for himself and his backers, while exposing little, if any assets of their own, as part of the risk or underlying cost to produce the treasure chest. In June of 2008, Edward Liddy took the helm of one of the largest privateers ever to sail the financial oceans, which was crewed by a host of cut throat pirates, AIG. Liddy embraced his new shipmates with gusto, when in October of 2008, after United States taxpayers had sunk $84 billion in to loans to AIG to address its insolvency, he defended the decision of his fellow buccaneers to blow $400,000 on a corporate junket to the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. In his subsequent testimony before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, Liddy stated that such retreats “are standard practice in our industry.”

Despite being hired by the American people to bring a sense of order, and propriety to AIG, to manage the remaining assets of AIG, to take appropriate actions to staunch the flow of more good money after bad money on behalf of the American people, Edward Liddy hoisted the pirate flag ever higher on his mast when he refuted the wishes of the president of the United Statess and the American people in his letter to Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner on March 14, 2008. Liddy refused to back down on the demand that he rescind the multimillion dollar bonuses paid out to the AIG staff and managers that were responsible for the company’s massive losses in 2008 which resulted in its take over by the United States government.

In closing his letter to the Treasury secretary, Edward Liddy had the pure arrogance to state:

I would not be doing my job if I did not directly advise you of my grave concern about the long-term consequences of the actions we are taking today. On the one hand, all of us at AIG recognize the environment in which we operate and the remonstrations of our President for a more restrained system of compensation for executives. On the other hand, we cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses – which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers – if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.

Edward Liddy seems to have forgotten any early education he might have had at Catholic University of America and George Washington University relative to human moral values and business ethics. Mr. Liddy also seems to have never learned anything about Actuarial Science, which is defined on Wikipedia as:

Actuarial science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in the insurance and finance industries. Actuaries are professionals who are qualified in this field through education and experience. They must demonstrate their qualifications by passing a series of professional examinations.

Instead of sound, prudent, ethical business practices, instead of recognizing his fiduciary responsibility to the owners of AIG (the American taxpayers), Mr. Liddy is concerned about losing the services of those negligent AIG management and staff who made the decisions, made the deals, sold the dubious credit default swap “products” which destroyed the financial viability of AIG. The people and institutions who created, promoted and sold credit default swaps, the people and institutions who packaged the obviously dubious mortgage derivative products that were based upon substandard, and likely in many cases, patently fraudulent loans. The “financial geniuses” at the top of the buccaneering clan, who through gross negligence, if not out and out greed and avarice, who administered the coup de gras to our financial system, might not be incented to continue providing their “expertise and services” to those of us who ultimately are footing the bill for their egregious performance. This attitude, conveyed by Edward Liddy is the height of arrogance.

Maybe it is a Wall Street thing, or more precisely a buccaneering thing. That regardless if someone who may have a prior history of prudent management as an executive in the early stages of his career, may have an educational and work background that indicates a high level of intellectual development, that once that person becomes a member of the Wall Street financial plutocracy, the buccaneering clan, that person loses all ability to identify with or understand or empathize with the lot of the vast majority of the common folk who make up the population of the United States. Those common, hard working folk who through their consumerism, those folk who through their efforts to build their own bit of shared wealth and provide for their families, those folk who sacrifice and try to put something away for the future higher education of their children, those folk who manage to put something aside for their future retirement, so they will not be a burden upon their families or society when they are too old and infirm to work.

The common folk do not exist in the mind or the sphere of influence that the Wall Street managers cocoon themselves in, the world of buccaneers sailing the financial seas on their privateers, trolling not just for gullible common folk, but actually any person or entity, even relatives in the buccaneering clan itself, as targets of opportunity. Once arriving on “the street”, the Wall Street management and sales classes become mesmerized by the riches they see available for plucking, and embrace their role as a part of a buccaneering clan, becoming drunk on their booty. They sneer at the rest of us awash in the roiling seas in their wake, secure in their superior position aboard their privateers, arrogant til the end of time.

The only thing that will hinder, if not sink the current crew of buccaneers, will be to relieve their captain of duty, and clawback, a very apropos term, the treasure distributed as bonuses, and for those crew members who did not already jump ship, even after being paid “retention bonuses”, make them walk the plank. AIG and the American tax paying public do not need to bribe cut-throat pirates to stay aboard while the mess on the deck of AIG is swabbed up, there are plenty of other, honest, ethical, qualified members of the financial seafaring community who are capable of passing out life vests and unwinding the remaining risk exposures at AIG.

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• Paying the ‘best and brightest’ at AIG (guardian.co.uk)
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• AIG Will Still Pay Out $160 Million in Bonuses (crooksandliars.com)
• AIG: Putting the Racketeering Back in the Insurance Racket (oxdown.firedoglake.com)
• Bailed-out AIG doles out $165 million in bonuses. (thinkprogress.org)
• President Obama: Block AIG bonuses (dailykos.com)

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Selling our soul to the Devil…

That is what the Fed is doing this morning. Selling more of our debt to foreign nations in order to bail out AIG. We are bailing out INVESTORS and stock holders…people who took a chance on making big bucks or going broke.

They went broke. Yet, our government sees nothing wrong with selling a huge portion of our debt to China or whomever is buying today, in order to have the cash to give to AIG.

I looked for a news story on it..googled it and got one Bloomberg story on it..what does that tell you?

The Media is complicit in this bullshit. They keep the most important part of this… cough…deal quiet so that we, the people, don’t think about what this horseshit is actually costing us. From another Bloomberg article on the subject of selling our debt to cover a privately owned companies ass:

Benchmark 10-year credit-default swaps on Treasuries increased 4 basis points to 30, according to BNP Paribas SA prices at 6:45 a.m. in New York. The contracts have risen from below 2 basis points at the start of the credit crisis in July 2007 and are more than double those on government bonds sold by Austria, Finland or Sweden.

The U.S. Treasury pledged an $85 billion loan for AIG just 10 days after committing as much as $200 billion to prevent a collapse of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The U.S. budget deficit will grow next year to $438 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said Sept. 9, making it harder for President George W. Bush’s successor to either cut taxes or increase spending.

Bush has little time left to fuck over America, but the man is doing his ever-lovin best to leave us in such a fucking shithole..it will take decades to crawl out of it.

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Did Ike storm Wallstreet?

The Question of the Bigger Picture: A Collision of Calamities

Is There a possibility that the Hurricane Crisis of IKE has just collided with the Wallstreet Crisis ? And if it has would that cause an even bigger Crisis for this Country to Face ? It is a question that needs closer examination and has not been brought up by Mainstream Media yet. At this point I don’t know if it will be examined or weighed.Is there a possibility that IKE caused Extensive Damage that Insurance Companies , even AIG will need to assist in. Is IKE the reason there was a desperate Financial Maneuver put forth by the FEDS and not a small Bridge Loan was offered to AIG, 85 – 90 Billion dollars was agreed upon at 7pm tonight. Someone should ask how much did AIG insure in Texas on a State and City level and privately and corporately. Was this WHY the FEDS were pressured to Bail Out AIG, is it about IKE ?

Post Mortem of the Disaster IKE:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{As a nurse with Disaster Experience and FEMA training I watch Disasters with more than a healthy interest, so my apology for the detailed analysis}. The IKE disaster has been intriguing on multiple levels, and worrisome, especially monitoring the Aftermath. When Katrina occurred we have extensive coverage put forth, 24 hours a day, the MSM served it up complete with carnage and damage. And yes, it occurred to me later that it was SWEEPS, so I am sure some of it was very much ratings driven. So getting accurate estimates of damage and even examining the visual damage with aerial footage has proved challenging.Within 48 hours of such an extensive disaster impacting millions of people Certain levels of AID and Care should have been rendered and offered. This includes power, water and shelter. FEMA teams are supposed to be sent to assess Damage and Needs, of humans and Businesses.

The Texas Coastline presents an interesting mix of damage to people and structures and landscape. Including the 4th Largest City in the Country with extensive Urban Damage as well as Damage to Numerous Petrochemical Companies and aligned companies.I mention this because all of these businesses are now involved in the damage assessment, as well as we should be hearing from DHHS and EPA about the damage along the Coastline as far as Needed Cleanup of this Hazardous Soup. Even not including Residential Losses and Commercial Losses and Business Losses, or Flood and Water Damage losses, estimates of the Damage from Texas alone comes to almost 40 Billion Dollars.And that is the starting amount proposed by Insurance Industry Experts, because of the Large City involved and the Petrochemical Oil Industry Damage.

Today President Bush went to the Texas Coast, and this time we were not shown ANY photos of him examining Damage. we were shown some photos of him at an Official Meeting. At none of the pressers we have been shown, has Bush said HOW MUCH AID was coming to Texas. Today on the news we did learn that IKE Victims were walking miles to Checkpoints to get 2 bags of ice and MRE’S and Food Supplies for 2 days.

Over 30,000 people are still be sheltered at 300 Shelters and over 1.2 Million are still without power and at least 1 Million are still misplaced and need to return Home. Yet there is only limited Power and Limited Water.It has not been released whether there was Environmental Damage to the Water Treatment Plants and Pipes tp deliver residential water, Surge Damage is one thing, Petrochemical Damage is another issue.We have not seen lines of delivery trucks and been told by the Media of the exact estimates of Food tonnage and gallons of water. We have not been told by the Media of FEMA how much per day would be spent on supplying these people with much needed power, generators,food etc. Those Logistics should readily available to be examined. Even the Red Cross has had to Borrow Money , because they have had a hard time working with FEMA getting financial reassurances.Over the next few days we may learn more what they are being offered from FEMA.

Ironically the Offshore Drilling Issue has scarcely been breathed in the past 5 days or discussed, or questions asked about WHO insured the Coastline Oil Rigs that were damaged by Houston.At least 14 Rigs were obliterated, and WHO is paying for the damage along the Coastline. Is AIG needed to cover the Damages of IKE in Texas ? AIG has Billions at stake due to IKE atleast 40 Billion in Texas, Billions and Billions more through the MidWest.

These offshore Rigs that are within the State Coastline are they insured by AIG ?If so that means the Environmental Cleanup not just the Rig Recovery/Rebuild would be covered by AIG.

{Another point to ponder about this issue is that in recent weeks we learned that the Interior Department had a cozy corrupt relationship with multiple Oil Companies. It is very odd that we have been shown NO Footage of BLM or Dept of Interior Officials examining the Coastline, or even USGS, or NOAA. Which brings up the next question WHO arranged the Insurance Coverage for the Shoreline of Texas, and Was there enough insurance to cover over Billions of Damage ? Was any of this coverage arranged with Interior Officials while wining and dining and worse ?}

These are concerns to ponder while you watch the AIG Spin the next few days, as Financial Guru’s try to explain WHY the Large Insurance Company is being bailed out by the FEDs with a Large Loan, yet they have never ever bailed out an Insurance Company. But before we watch the Federal Government Bail out A Large Corporation with Billions should we have heard the FEDS offer assistance and aid to the People of Texas ? Did we learn Nothing from Katrina ? And shouldn’t we ask the MSM to be covering the Disaster In Texas as this disaster mushrooms to Something more Disasterous ?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Background Articles for Further Exploration :::

(1) Assessing the Damage and comparing to OTHER Disasters in Texas WSJ article
(2) Galveston Damage Assessed with photos…
(3) Assessing the IKE Damage from LA Times shows numbers and estimates.
(4) Here is the article where Bush offers Help but NO real Numbers no actual money put on the table.
(5) More on AIG and Texas A Bad Situation worse?
(6) Is AIG Connected to Texas ?There is ONE Trillion worth in IKE”S path .
(7) MORE on Insurance Issues related to IKE and Texas and more Questions.
Photos from BBC Archives.( Public Domain)

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Do the republicans still want to privatize social security?

Privatizing social security was one of the corner stones of the Bush administration. ~Weren’t these guys supposed to be the folk that would handle all of our retirement accounts?

The Dow took a huge shit yesterday on the weekend news that more financial institutions were taking their last breaths. Over four percent of its value went into the shitter people.

AIG is now gasping for breath..wait a minute..AIG is an insurance corporation? Why are they dying?

Mortgage investments, just like all the rest of them. They provide insurance for the greedy stock market funds, that’s why. Their stock value plummeted over 60 percent yesterday.

Wall Streeters are screaming for more Federal moolah….they are demanding it. They also want a drop in the prime interest rate again.

But the prime is already at the bottom of the barrel…how can it drop any farther? Why are we, the taxpayers expected to take it in the shorts for these greedy fuckers? Why? From the LAT link above:

The downfall of 158-year-old Lehman, combined with the unexpected deal by Bank of America to acquire Merrill, marked the most dramatic reshaping of the Wall Street landscape since the Great Depression, analysts said. Lehman, mortally wounded by loss-ridden securities tied to real estate loans, filed Monday for protection from creditors who hold more than $600 billion of the firm’s various IOUs.

In its bankruptcy petition, Lehman reported assets of $639 billion and liabilities of $613 billion. It listed 30 unsecured creditors to whom it owes about $158 billion. The markets are likely to remain on edge for weeks, experts said, until the extent of Lehman-related losses at other firms becomes clear.

A collapse of AIG could be an even bigger problem for the country’s financial system, Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis told CNBC. “I don’t know of a major bank that doesn’t have some significant exposure to AIG,” he said.

Part of AIG’s business is to provide a way for big investors to hedge against potential market losses in their portfolios by essentially taking the other side of the investors’ bets. (emphasis mine)

Why is it ok to nationalize their losses? Someone explain it to me? Will someone make John McCain explain it to me since that sumbitch said yesterday the ‘fundimentals of our economy are strong’? How about Nancy Pelosi? I want one of the mutha fuckas in the Bush Administration to explain to me why it’s ok to bail out a greedy financial institution but not Americans barely eeking out a life with the inflation we currently have going on…I want that fucking explanation now….and we all deserve it, make no mistake about that.

McCain said it was greed that caused all these problems. Obama said it was deregulation. They are both right in a basic sort of way. The NYT puts it this way:

On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”

But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline.

~ Which means he is lying to get votes.

Mr. Obama set out his general approach to financial regulation in March, calling for regulating investment banks, mortgage brokers and hedge funds much as commercial banks are. And he would streamline the overlapping regulatory agencies and create a commission to monitor threats to the financial system and report to the White House and Congress.

On Wall Street’s Republican-friendly turf, Mr. Obama has outraised Mr. McCain. He has received $9.9 million from individuals associated with the securities and investment industry, $3 million more than Mr. McCain, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. His advisers include Wall Street heavyweights, including Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary who is now a senior adviser at Citigroup, another firm being buffeted by the financial crisis.

~Which candidate makes more sense and their record supports what they are saying? It’s a no-brainer people..and here is a hint…its not a republican and I will bet its not the democrat either.

This financial meltdown is a gift to the democrats…will they do anything with it? Pelosi and company could start now with bills to finally regulate those fucking hedge funds. The only question we should be asking is why haven’t they done it prior to all this turmoil and carnage..

We can jerk out the republicans for this mess, but bear in mind that the best Democratic President the Republicans ever had in office, Bill Clinton, started the deregulation ball rolling for financial institutions when he demanded and got passed the The Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999. From this post I did earlier in the year about what a putz Bill Clinton was:

The Financial Services Modernization Act was a real gem as well. Enacted in 1999, this sucker deregulated the banking and investment industry. This opened the door to the creation of the ‘hedge fund’ which we all know is not regulated in the slightest and is the most crooked investment scenario ever created with many cases of manipulation and down right illegal price-fixing.

Reagan and Bush41 were assholes with regard to deregulation as well, make no mistake about it. We have seen what wholesale deregulation has caused with the Enron Scandal and now…the mortgage mess. The long and short of it is this:

You can not trust greedy bastards to regulate themselves. Its fuckwitted at best, and dangerous to our economy at its worst..Fuck capitalists…fuck em hard. But take this with you today…even in bankruptcy, the head honcho for Lehman Brothers will get a $22 MILLION DOLLAR RETIREMENT PACKAGE…

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AIG now begging for bail out funds..

With BofA poised to buy the fucked up Merrill Lynch and Lehman brothers taking a huge ass shit…now we see AIG is on their knees and begging for Federal Aid. From the NYT:

The American International Group is seeking a $40 billion bridge loan from the Federal Reserve, as it faces a potential downgrade from credit ratings agencies that could spell its doom, a person briefed on the matter said Sunday night.

Ratings agencies threatened to downgrade the insurance giant’s credit rating by Monday morning, allowing counterparties to withdraw capital from their contracts with the company. One person close to the firm said that if such an event occurred, A.I.G. may survive for only 48 hours to 72 hours.

A.I.G.’s sickly financial health emerged late into one of the most tumultuous days in Wall Street history. Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank, is expected to file for bankruptcy protection Sunday night, while Bank of America has agreed to buy Merrill Lynch for $50.03 billion.

It has already raised $20 billion this year. But even that enormous capital raise may not be enough.

This is horseshit. These firms need to suck it up or fail, I don’t give a shit who they are. Fuck the investors, they sure has hell aren’t worried about what I pay to fill my gas tank, or what it costs to buy a small bag of groceries these days. Fuck em all. They might actually have to sweat a bit…just like the rest of us.

Tags: AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch

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