I don’t believe that it would have been that bad if they would have gone under. Troubling, yes but we could have taken the hit.

I wonder why Frank thinks it is OK to just change the conditions of the contracts and take the money but has not told the auto unions that the government is going to negate their contracts and start over.

If we are going to get upset about money then let us get upset about the money paid to Dodd and Obama in campaign contributions. 100k each…

http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-stimulus-bill-explicitly-grants-aig-the-legal-right-to-hand-out-bonuses/

Obama should take full and direct responsibility for this mess.

If AIG had failed on it’s own it would have taken a lot of other financial institutions down with it. This isn’t to suggest a more “orderly” failure for AIG isn’t in the future but AIG falling over in the wake of Lehman would have very likely ushered in a massive crisis on par with the Great Depression.

This is what happens when they don’t read the bills.

Liddy said that AIG lawyers could not find a way to stop the bonuses. They must have been legal if the lawyers could not find a way out of it.

This is what happens when government gets involved in private business. They should have been left to fail.

Dodd’s original amendment did not include that exemption, and the Connecticut Senator denied inserting the provision.

“I can’t point a finger at someone who was responsible for putting those dates in,” Dodd told FOX. “I can tell you this much, when my language left the senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did.”

Second you and others are misconstruing the clause that did make it into the final version as exempting contracted bonuses period, and not simply exempting the bonuses from the amendments that Dodd proposed. From the text of the bill:

The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.

Notice how it says “under clause (i)”. It doesn’t say anything like “bonus payments required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract are exempt from restrictions.”

Notice the last part about “determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.” As pointed out in the Dodd Amendment:

The term “Secretary” means the Secretary of the Treasury.

A large part of the outrage here is AIG failing to disclose those given bonuses. This falls under the watch of Geithner and AIG is breaking the law by hiding these details from him.

I think this whole conversation about the bonuses and Dodd on your end is full of a great deal of misinformation and folks at Fox and Limbaugh and Drudge are helping spread the lies.

And there’d have been NO paychecks, period. This is what should have happened to AIG. They are still bankrupt, even after all the billions we’ve pumped into them.

So answer this question; why does our government, Congress, the White House, the Treasury; want to bail out AIG? I don’t buy the argument that it’s too big to fail. That’s an absolutely idiotic position.

Why is our government hellbent on saving this Titanic of a company? Mortgage derivatives insured by them? Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac bundled mortgages? Is AIG responsible to the federal government for policies insuring bad mortgages?

And finally, how did this company get into this mess?

Something about this whole scenario stinks to high heaven.