Write Congress!
and/or
I really don’t know what to say about this, aside from string them all up. You read the headline correctly. AIG, the same company that received $84 billion in taxpayer money to bail the company out from terrible decisions they made freely in our “free market,” the same company that then decided last week that it was ok to spend $443,344 on an executive junket on the Pacific coast, the same company who has another lavish junket scheduled for next week, is getting another $38 billion from the taxpayers today. They have already withdrawn $61 billion of the first $84 billion bailout, so yes, your tax dollars most definitely paid for that junket.
AIG CEO Edward Liddy defended the junket today in a letter to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson:
While this sort of gathering has been standard practice in our industry for many years and was planned many months before the Federal Reserve’s loan to AIG, we understand that our company is now facing very different challenges…Edward M. Liddy
Chief Executive Officer, AIG
Liddy goes on to assure Paulson that, after having spent over 400 large for “independent life
insurance agents – not for AIG employees” to have a good time, they are “reevaluating the costs of all aspects of our operations in light of the new circumstances in which we are all operating.”
I think Mr. Liddy’s inability to “reevaluate” fast enough is clearly evident. I’m running out of clever ways to reference the French revolution without explicitly referencing it…err…see what I mean? At what point do we storm the Bastille, people? When are we going to get mad enough to actually take to the streets? If not now, when? Do they actually have to come into your home and steal your remote control to get the American public angry enough to protest?
They are stealing your future!
They are stealing my future!
They are stealing my future children’s future!
Won’t you join me in my outrage by writing to your representatives and to Congressman Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. He is, as I write this, conducting hearings on this very matter. Please take a moment to let him know just how unacceptable it is that AIG continue to receive a single dime from any of our pockets. Let ’em rot, come what may!
Full text of Liddy’s letter to Paulson after the jump (PDF)
October 8, 2008
Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
Secretary of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20220
Dear Secretary Paulson:
I am writing to clarify an issue that was discussed at a hearing held yesterday by the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At the hearing, a recent business event held
by an AIG subsidiary was mischaracterized as an “Executive Retreat” held right after receiving
the $85 billion loan credit facility from the New York Fed.
The event in question was held by one of AIG’s insurance subsidiaries for independent life
insurance agents – not for AIG employees – who were top business producers for the company.
The vast majority of the attendees were independent business people and their guests, not AIG
employees. Indeed, of the more than 100 attendees, only 10 were employees of one of our
insurance subsidiaries who attended to represent their company. Not a single corporate executive
from AIG headquarters attended.
While this sort of gathering has been standard practice in our industry for many years and was
planned many months before the Federal Reserve’s loan to AIG, we understand that our company
is now facing very different challenges – and that we owe our employees and the American
public new standards and approaches. Let me assure you that we are reevaluating the costs of all
aspects of our operations in light of the new circumstances in which we are all operating.
Mr. Secretary, I want you to know that AIG is focused on doing what is necessary to address our
capital structure, repay the Fed credit facility and emerge as a healthy global insurer. In the
meantime, our insurance businesses continue to operate normally and satisfy the needs of our
policy holders.
Sincerely,
Edward M. Liddey
#1 by Shelly Walston on October 9, 2008 - 12:53 pm
Sure the TV’s partially to blame. But don’t you also believe that the public’s apathy is, in large part, due to the fact that many people don’t/can’t fathom the kind of debt the government is talking about. $700 BILLION (nay, a TRILLION) dollars is a largely unfathomable quantity. I mean, what does that even look like? And because it’s so large (and incomprehensible), perhaps folks don’t actually believe it’s happening to them.
Honestly, the bailout hasn’t “trickled down” yet; I’m still able to get money out of my ATM. My paycheck still comes in the mail. Until the ATM runs dry, until grandma and grandpa’s savings account isn’t backed by the government, until paychecks stop coming in the mail, people will most likely continue life as usual.
It’s revolting to be sure, but I’m afraid we live in a society where until the government comes door to door to slap people in the faces, kick them in the shins, yes! even steal the remotes, people won’t realize what a mess the government has put us in. It’s an unfathomable future, and one they’re not even interested in speculating about.
That said. You organize the rally, and I’ll be there.
#2 by Patrick T. Lafferty on October 9, 2008 - 1:03 pm
I don’t want to have to organize the rally. I want all of us free thinkers to grab a pitchfork and a torch and march out our front doors without the need to organize. We will inevitably find eat other when the shit-kicking begins.
We need to go looking for the fight! Don’t wait for it to come to your door and kick you in the shins!
I know this sounds a lot like the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, but it isn’t. This is actually a long-forgotten phrase around these 50 states, “enlightened self-interest.”
When we started serving the corporate master, we lost sight of the fact that, under the law of the land, we are in charge. Now that we are buying up all of AIG, those assholes, in addition to those in Congress, now work for us. Time to exert that long-forgotten power!
Also, I find it totally unacceptable that we can’t fathom how big $1 trillion actually is. You are technically correct in that I cannot visualize what that amount looks like. But there comes a point when the number is so large, my brain just defaults to screaming “NO!” Yours, your parents, my parents, all of our brains should do that. And if the people asking for it can’t explain it sufficiently to convince me, then the answer shall remain no.
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