Back by popular demand: It’s teh Wheelhouse March Madness Road to the Final Four Bracket Extravaganza! I gotta tell you, this is a great year to argue for your favorite team, because with the exception of a few small conference champion entrants, there is a lot of parity in the field, some key injuries here and there and some intriguing matchups.
For earlier liveblog posts:Committee Members Blowhard Statements Panel 1: The RegulatorsPanel 2: Liddy, Part One
Gary Peters asks the question all Michiganders have been asking since September. Why are UAW’s line workers forced to renegotiate their contracts and GM’s engineers forced to forgo bonuses, but not the banksters who ruined the economy?
While I agree that AIGFP’s employees should not be getting threats, I also think taxpayers should not tolerate the threats that AIG is making about our financial system.
The hearing can be view on the committee stream or CSPAN3.
The witnesses are:
Panel two Mr. Edward M. Liddy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, American International Group Mr. Rodney Clark, Managing Director, Insurance Ratings, Standard & Poor’s
The first panel on AIG hearing.
The Financial Services Committee beats up on AIG.
We don’t have the AIG retention contracts. But we do have Joseph Cassano’s termination contract, which was probably negotiated at the same time. Here’s what it tells us is probably in those retention contracts.
Edward Liddy’s op-ed in the WaPo reveals two significant details: those contracts were negotiated at least as early as March 17, 2008, just in time for AIG’s public confession that AIGFP was FUBAR. And the real issue here is not the contractual obligation to the banksters, but the risk still present in the CDS strategies.
Pretty much the only news this week has been outrage over the bogus bonuses paid to individuals in the AIG Financial Products division (yes, they have already been paid) and discussion among the political class as to how to remedy the situation. The moment we have all been waiting for has arrived: Tim Geithner has announced his master plan. Sounds like he stole it from Gomer Pyle.
