Per Gateway Pundit, The One knew about the bonuses for months:
Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Senator Barack Obama received a $101,332 bonus from American International Group in the form of political contributions according to Opensecrets.org. The two biggest Congressional recipients of bonuses from the A.I.G. are - Senators Chris Dodd and Senator Barack Obama.The A.I.G. Financial Products affiliate of A.I.G. gave out $136,928, the most of any AIG affiliate, in the 2008 cycle. I would note that A.I.G.’s financial products division is the unit that wrote trillions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps and "misjudged" the risk.
Seems also that Dodd's wife is a former Director of AIG's Bermuda-based control company:
From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an "outside" director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG - giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC. (AIG sold its 13.397 million shares in IPC in August, 2006.)
Of course, the Republicans got ripped apart for objecting to the bailout. And Michelle Malkin wants us all to take a look behind the curtain to see that the outrage against the bonuses is manufactured. Perhaps we should be asking why the bailout occurred in the first place.
1 comment:
It's getting filthier and filthier with every news it brings, isn't it? At 1st the angry outburst both by politicians and media; then it became clear that it was not news at all to the administration; then the bonuses doesn't seem to be real bonuses in the strict meaning of the word; then Opensecrets comes up with their revelation...
I really wish the media had something else to rattle on. It's getting a bit tiresome.
Take care,
Elli
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