This is several days after the big hubbub about the AIG bonuses. Already the issue is receding into the news recesses, even as it was a highly volatile and big news issue for several days. On the one hand....what a pisser. These sobs' getting huge bonuses....even as the company lives off the govt dole. More relevantly some of those receiveing the bonus were the MFers that put the economy into this mess. How rediculous. On the other hand the size of the bonuses were teeny teeny teeny relative to the overall problems of the economy/debt/the amount of money going into bailouts/recovery investment etc. One issue with regard to the 90% tax on the people who received the bonuses. It was a solution an answer. An effort at trying to correct a mistake. That is what people tend to do. When something gets f*cked up....someone tries to correct it. If no one does anything.....that is cr@p. Does it mean the world is changing w/ regard to taxes? Obviously not. The only people who would argue that are the one's who are so incredibly partisan that they care more about politics than the state of the union and what is going on in the world and the nation. To them everything becomes a huge issue larger than it is. We saw that above w/ some screaming about the issue and turning it into armegeddon while other self proclaimed republicans saying they wanted a vote supporting the 90% tax on the bonus recipients. Meanwhile is it constitutional? Well if it passes--if the Pres signs it....it will probably go before the supreme court to test the constitutionality. So be it. Meanwhile, I don't have the reference but one of the bonus recipients wrote a resignation letter to the current ($1/year) chairman of AIG, which he also had published in the NYTimes. There are many perspectives on the issue. Frankly I don't think these people deserve the bonuses (even after reading the resignation letter from the guy who defended its merits). I have no problem w/ taxing them on the majority of what they got from them. Again .....that is a solution to the existing problem. There could be other solutions. Meanwhile if it passes and if it is signed and goes into effect it takes back almost all the money that I don't think should go to those folks...and since the govt is bailing out the money....good put it back in the govt and taxpayers hands. There are far better uses of govt money than giving it to wall streeters who have prime responsibility for this mess. Meanwhile is this thing financial armegeddon? Cripes. Grow up. This is one of the thousands of cr@ppy things going wrong with the economy.....all of which have to be dealt with.
Merrill Lynch handed out bonuses of $3.1 billion in bonuses using bailout money just before Bank of America merger last Dec. Worse most of the AIG bailout money is going to foreign banks. German and French banks got $36 billion from AIG Bailout. http://www.businessweek.com/the_thr...en.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_economicsunbound
@ Bogart: Look the entire financial industry bailout is a big mess. It is unknown territory....and it appears it is a moving target w/ govt trying to improve its abilities on acting on this as it moves along. The goal was to keep the financial system working. With that goal there have been efforts to keep some of the existing financial institutions (scumbags) alive. Assuming we move through this mess there will be plenty of opportunities to see where mistakes were made and where good calls were made. There was a severe meltdown on credit availability this past fall. It hit me and folks I know w/ letters removing lines of credit even as our financials were fine. It hit business people I know whose sales reflect credit availability. It seems to have eased somewhat....but credit is not flowing as it did. The govt allowed one investment bank to fail and saved another. After the first investment bank failure the international credit markets froze, let alone credit to the consumer here in the states. As to allowing bonuses. I'd try to stop em all now. Some of them were missed and peeps got bonuses. Who gives a cr@p about retention bonuses when there are less jobs on Wall Street in general. Where are the dudes going....if the jobs are drying up? In so far as bailout money is going overseas, OTOH I don't like it, OTother H, I understand it is to help sustain the world wide financial system. I would like clear explanation about why American tax payer money is going overseas though, to save overseas financial institutions. Credit is flowing better now than in Sept-Nov. Hopefully that continues. Meanwhile it is a dreadful economy. March auto sales in the US were up from Feb....by good numbers...but still at horrendous totals. We are selling new cars at an annual rate of less than 10 million. 2 years ago we were selling new cars at a rate of about 15-17 million. Whoa...that means that an immense amount of manufacturing capability is not being used....immense numbers of peeps are out of work. This will take time to work out....if (and crossing my fingers) it does work out.
They don't? One of them just spent 4 times more than Bush ever spent in ONE DAY!!! 3.76 Trillion dollars? Yeah, presidents don't do squat.
Bush just spent it all on the Iraq War and bailing out his banking buddies while leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill just before he left office. Bush will be called the Great ASS by the younger generations. What a coward.
Iraq did not even hit the "trillion" mark. We spent more here in the US as consumers buying OIL in 12 months than we spent in Iraq. You leave in quite the sheltered reality my friend. By the ignorant yes. Its difficult for them not to when we have authors making shit up and re-writing history in the text books our kids are using in the classroom. Quite the contrary, he's likely the bravest and most revered in modern history. Seems some here have either forgotten 9/11 or are just too young to remember.
I guess it should have been the Iraq/Afghanistan/war on terror/Guantanamo/Surveillance society Bush created while being completely asleep at the switch while the financial sector burned to the ground. He's a modern-day Nero. From Wikipedia.org - Nero's rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance. Hmmm. Sounds a lot like Bush's terms. You did see that graph about the explosion in debt created by Bush? Just in case you don't like graphs... Bush Administration Adds $4 Trillion To National Debt $5 trillion added to national debt under Bush If you call Bush brave and revered, I see why this country is so screwed. I think the 9/11 excuse has run its course.
Proof positive of my previous points. Kids and incorrect text books leads to a lot of ignorance. Again, facts are facts... No one needs a graph when they've lived in reality the last 8 years.
Graph supplied by PioneerGold Followed by these comments by Mia.... That is absurd and cherry picking, Mia. Prior to 1994.....the last time the GOP controlled Congress was....(drum roll)....1952. Check out all those years....no decades...when Dems had majorities in Congress and debt kept diminishing as a percentage of GNP/GDP. Decade after decade...with both Repub and Dem presidents....until..... Reagan. of course if you want an inside look at how the GOP in this decade really thought about debt...take the quote from the book written about Paul O'Neill by a third party author, and his period as Secretary of the Treasury . Here is what Cheney said to O'Neill directly quoting from "The Price of Loyalty" O'Neill, who didn't write the book, doesn't have anything to gain by it....has continued to describe that meeting repeating that stunning statement over many years. During the Clinton years, with a Republican majority for the first time in 52 years, Clinton and Republicans pulled off something that has only occurred once in a blue moon. They decreased the quoted federal deficit (not the real deficit that includes unfunded future payments not shown in the non accrual method of govt accounting). Bush the 2nd came into office and repeated the Reagan efforts and the same budget bullshit occurred again. (obviously the GOP didn't give a squat about it). Now we are moving into humongous budget deficits, no doubt; horrible economy, bailouts/stimulous/ etc etc. and the huge budget deficits in existance. It starts with an incredibly easy picture to see though...as the graph shows (in part). Cut taxes (as Bush and Reagan did).....and if you don't cut expenses(expenses went up under both Bush and Reagan)(the part the graph doesn't show) and the budget deficit goes thru the roof. BTW, though not in the graph....when it comes to govt expenses....they were far far far higher during Bush years than Clinton years....and accelerated at a far faster pace.
No no no Mia. Think about it... come on... think... Presidents never make decisions, the few above them do the dictating and then presidents carry it out - within their actual limited abilities, mind. The lobbyists, bankers and the fed planned the spending. Obama is just the front man - just like every president since JFK. He tried to end the fed and look what happened to him... Seriously, do you just listen to Fox News and assume the surface they scratch is the entirety?
That graph really says it all as far as the Republicans running up the debt and then claiming they are "fiscally conservative" as soon as a Democrat gets in and actually wants to do something positive with the money (other than wars and tax cuts for the rich which are the only thing the GOP is interested in.) There's a couple other graphs that I think are also telling: 1. The wealth ratio of the rich to middle class keeps increasing and it seems to have increased particularly fast under Reagan & Bush. This is so important for people to realize: The Republican economic approach is only good for the very very rich. It is not good for you. Unless you are damn rich, your share of the pie decreases with that approach. 2. Even more disturbing to me: Huge increase in prison population beginning around 1980. I'm proud to say that one of my Senators from Virginia (Jim Webb) is actually speaking out on this problem. I heard Webb say the other day that America has 5% of the world's population but 25% of it's prison population. That's insane. All of the people in prison for nonviolent crimes could be productive members of society but instead they are locked up and costing us a fortune. Follow the money of course. Someone is making money because people who shouldn't be in prison are.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released an alarming report indicating that the President’s budget will create deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion a year for the next decade, and it would double the national debt in five years and nearly triple it in 10 years. Yet another failed promise to cut the national debt in half by the time his first/only term is up. But I agree with Brum, now a days, presidents are just figure heads for the lobbyists that get them there. Does anyone want to hear the best way to stop the budget going through the roof, and maybe even start paying itback? Stop all the earmarked funding for stupid crap. There really needs to be an oversight committe on how actually the money is getting spent. Its great, have a bill that spends X amount of dollars on this socialized health care system we're getting set up. Thats fine, whatever. But, don't attach money to that bill to go to your little pet project back at home. Don't tack money on to go to your buddy the power company owner. Someone needs to get a law passed that, except for the actual budget, a bill can only approve funding for one thing at a time. No earmarks, or pigfeet, or any other term used to describe that practice. It doesn't matter who is the one spending it, dems or repubs, its just wrong to do that kind of things. And the stimulus plan, the way it gets paid out will do nothing to help Americans. You now get like 12 dollars extra a paycheck. And small business owners and middle class people, the ones we need to keep the economy going, are getting their taxes raised. I personally think bailouts are wrong. If the company wants to stay up, Chapter 11 Bankruptcy is always there for you.
Zibblu, Obama is going to suck your country (and ours) dry. He'll keep bringing out "stimulus package" after "stimulus package" and further sell your country's gold until 'we the people' have no real wealth at all. The elite are bankrupting the world. Just wait til a global currency or governance comes in to "save the day". You need to drop this defence of the false left-right paradigm. The parties are the same at the end of the day as they're both controlled by the bankers. Third parties are the way forward, but until more Americans wake up, they'll be forced to take "sides" on the 'left' or 'right' to keep them busy attacking each other and distracted from the people who are really wrecking things. End the Federal Reserve, bring back a gold standard, arrest the wall street criminals and nullify the debt caused by the bailouts. This is the only solution to get your nation back to how it once was and how it should be. Article 1, Section 10: "No state shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts..." These issues didn't come about because of Bush, Obama or Clinton. The bankers forced Woodrow Wilson to begin the indebt of the people. You should all be banding together and supporting Ron Paul's 'audit of the federal reserve' bill. I'm English and own a copy of the US constitution for I avidly support it. I just wish we had the same "privileges" here.
Brum. Nonsense. The gold standard was ended in the early '30s by FDR to fight the original depression. The gold standard is an outdated idea that does not apply to modern economics. And yes I know that it was Nixon in '71 who officially got us off the gold standard but in reality America has been off it since 1933. And for those claiming Obama's budget is somehow many times larger than any Budget Bush came up with please consider where you hear such nonsense before you repeat it. And also, think to yourself: "Does this make any sense?" Does it make sense that the budget could suddenly be four times larger than it was the year before? Is that even close to logical? http://mediamatters.org/items/200904030018
Actually, the US had a silver basis (domestic) for the dollar until 1969. It had the gold basis (foreign) for the dollar until 1971. After 1971, all value was lost from the dollar, whether cloth or coin.
I suspect that the banks locked up credit last fall to expedite the bailout. The bailout is a worse mess than we know. The 180 Billion that we gave to AIG is gone. The finacial industry is using bailout money to give themselves fat bonuses. Freddie/Fannie are planning to hand out 210 million in bonuses. Some banks are even using bailout money to buy "toxic" assets. I believe that it's going to get worse. Housing prices will decline on average another 20% in 2009 and commericial real estate is in trouble. It doesn't seem that we have learned anything from this crisis. The FHA is giving home loans with 3% down.