AIG Hypocrisy

It makes my skin crawl listening to politicians talking bad about AIG. It reminds me of rapists and murderers discussing how bad jaywalkers are.

Okay, so they are outraged over less than 1/10th of 1% of the bailout money being spent for bonuses, including some who got over $4M. The question then becomes where was the outrage when Franklin Raines took in over $50M in bonuses for a six year period where he lied and Fannie Mae began this whole economic slide, almost taking down the entire country?

We have Chris Dodd, that bastion of honesty, lying through his teeth about writing the amendment to the stimulus bill that not only authorized AIG's bonuses, but basically tied their hands and forced them to pay out the money. The next day, Dodd turns around and admits to inserting the amendment but now is claiming someone in the administration told him to do it, and he won't name names.

Surely you understand this was a contract between two private parties, and the law stated any contracts signed before the stimulus bill had to be honored, and the provisions of the contracts stated that should an employee not get his money, he could sue and collect twice the amount plus lawyers fees.

Surely you understand that it's illegal and unconstitutional for congress to now make up laws to retroactively confiscate the bonuses, and if they are allowed to get away with this, it opens the door for them to retroactively decide to take anybody's money they don't like.

Back to Franklin Raines, who was twice as corrupt as Ken Lay at Enron. Here's a story on the Fannie Mae bonuses. Here's another story on the money Raines received. This story details the $2.6M Raines was paid after he was forced out at Fannie Mae for lying and illegally overstating earnings to qualify for the bonuses. By the way, Ken Lay went to prison for the same offense, yet Raines was saved from prison by his Democratic buddies, including Obama.

At this link, you can read comments from people who compare Raines to Lay, and consider Raines to be worse. The largest bonus being given to AIG employees is $4.6M, while in 2003, Raines was paid almost $20M, and it was based on his lies.

Even after being caught red handed, Raines agreed to a sweetheart deal where lefties claimed he was paying back over $24 Million in exchange for not being criminally prosecuted. In fact, over $15 Million was worthless Fannie Mae stock options, and another $2 Million was paid by Fannie’s insurance, underwritten by, you guessed it, taxpayers. The bulk of the remainder was him giving up his future retirement benefits, while he was allowed to keep almost all of the nearly $100M he illegally stole from taxpayers.

In 6 years, Raines made almost $100 Million from running Fannie Mae into the ground. Almost $53 Million of that was from bonuses that came from vastly overstating earnings. Remember, overstating earnings was the thing that got Enron in so much trouble.

One last thing - don’t forget that AIG gave over $100,000 to Obama last year. Will he give that money back?