Hey...why don't we just leave these guys alone eh? I am quite certain that with the new 60 billion dollars they have requested that things will be just fine....yep....just fine. Now....about that money? http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/04/news/aig.transparency.fortune/index.htm Here is a nice little tidbit: "Former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the Bush administration Treasury secretary who oversaw the first half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program."
Not sure anything can save AIG, at least that's what the Financial analyst I listened to this AM said. They are too big to allow to fail, but probably too troubled to save. Quite a pickle.
I am looking forward to when someone....probably Congress.....finally gets a report together tracking all of these billions upon billions of handed out taxpayer money to these financial cesspools to see just what in the hell they have done with the money. I'm sure we have a few surprises in store for us when they finally get to the bottom of it....probably some ugly surprises at that. I wonder how many Bernie Madoff's there are out there? You want reasons for a lack of confidence in Wall Street look no further than Manhattan. But hey....I sure wouldn't want to "demonize" these poor guys....no sir....my gosh.
I guess my memory is confused. Did the Republicans line up behind creation of the TARP? A Democratic controled Congress did pass that legislation didn't it? Oh and before he went to work for the Treasury Dept. Tim Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates. One of their clients was Lehman Bros. Must have missed that tidbit.
Gip, prior to his ascendancy to 1st tax cheat of the Treasury, Geihtner was the President of the New York Fed where he and Secretary Paulsen worked closely together in the design and roll-out of the TARP program, AIG and Fannie and Freddie bailouts. Secretary Geigthner is as much or more of an architect of the existing bailout structure as anybody in the world.... Oh and about the Paulsen tidbit..... Another conspiracy theory still born through ignorance...... It is now and has been forever quite common for sitting presidents to seek Wall Street's leaders to fill the Treasury post.....it was after all perhaps the first and perhaps the finest of all Treasury Secretary's Alexander Hamilton who founded the Bank of New York.
Gipper....my post wasn't about GOP vs. Dems... It was about all the criticism being levied about all the criticism being levied about Wall Street. I think until we see some clear cut evidence of the money going to useful and needed national interest purposes for all of these billions handed out then we have a right to be suspicious.
If the effective functioning of our capital markets is not "useful and needed national interest purposes", we don't have any...... If you and your comrades in power in DC believe that we can get out of this ditch without the commitment of massive amounts of private sector capital, you are as clueless as he and the rest of his ragtag band of amateurs .....if we don't have functional capital markets, there will be no recovery.....not in our life time. End of story......continue on bashers.
Why should these billions of dollars of TARP bail out transactions be cloaked in secrecy? Why shouldn't there be complete transparency with regard to where the funds are going?
What is the secret? The recipients of the TARP money is public information.....why is it you keep looking for ghosts and conspiracy theories? There is no secret.....they are doing the same thing with it that you are doing with the public's money.....they are paying their bills.
Oh...I see. Then Congress and most Americans are concerning themselves over nothing. How simple. :roll:
Congress? Congress? Are you kidding me? The same Congress that appropriated funds for swamp rats, STD's and tatoo removal under the guise of a stimulus program to address the nation's economic crisis? That Congress? The Congress led by the great statesmen Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? That Congress? Are you f##king kidding me? Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds? It's political theater.....it's no different than your neigbor asking you what you are doing with the publics money in order to make some sort of political statement. Right? Does he not have a right to know how you are spending his money? Did you wake up this morning and concern yourself with giving him a detailed accounting of what you did with his money? Why not? What are you hiding?
Well.....we're talking hundreds of billions here. I think we should know just exactly where, who and why. If that's too much to ask then let the SOBs fail.
...and you? The difference is if they go down, the rest of us may well go with them.......if you go down, it's unlikely to trigger an international apocalypse. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.....
YAY!!!!!!! I've won over another convert!! Wooo Hoooooooooooooooo Of course, my position is that we have the risk of true failure with all of these companies.. If you risk death, you tend to be more responsible in the first place. We keep throwing the lifeline and they keep lighting up another smoke.
30 million policy holders, from individuals to cities, to 401K's, they have their hands in just about every pie. That's just in the US, they operate in over 100 countries. That's why everybody is afraid to let them fail.
True enough TOK, but it goes even beyond that.....they are inextricably entangled in the CDS market which is at the core of the credit crisis. If they were unable to meet their obligations, imho, the effective functioning of the world credit markets would be at risk. So to the question, what are they doing with the money? They are meeting those obligations as best they can..... Without being alarmist, if that were to happen, I don't believe we'd see a recovery in my lifetime. Just my opinion but that would be one helluva roll of the dice..... :shock:
If we just keep throwing money at it with no accountability as BT to me is suggesting then Corey's statement is absolutely true. Accountability is more than "hey.....don't worry.....we know what we're doing here...."
Nowhere did I suggest that....take it from one who has been in their shoes as the Treasurer of a bank that was under an MOU - a Memorandum of Understanding from the regulatory authorities. The memorandum stating in effect that our understanding is that you don't do one f^^king thing without our approval or you will go to jail so to speak.....we understood that very clearly to be sure. The regulator in charge was on site and had an office directly across the hall from mine.... Now, the scrutiny that AIG is under is one trillion times greater than anything we had to endure.....the government is living there conducting the equivalent of a cavity search.....that's plenty of oversight and accountability. AIG can't even go to the pi$$er without asking permission I assure you.... What possible productive outcome will there be from the political theater and ridiculous pompous posturing that a congressional witch trial would bring?