Obama’s $100,000 AIG Bonus
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 9:39 AMBy: Jim Meyers
President Barack Obama has called the bonuses that AIG paid its employees an “outrage,” but Obama himself received a “bonus” of sorts from the insurance giant — more than $100,000 in campaign contributions.
In fact, the $101,332 that the Obama campaign received was larger than the amount AIG donated to any other candidate except Sen. Chris Dodd, according to Opensecrets.org.
Newsmax reported on Tuesday that the Connecticut Democrat, who received $103,100 from AIG, inserted language in the $787 billion stimulus bill that allowed all bonuses awarded before February 11, 2009, to be paid to AIG executives.
AIG contributed to 18 Democratic members of the Senate in the last election cycle, including Hillary Clinton ($35,965) and Joe Biden ($19,975), and 34 Democratic House candidates.
The insurance firm also contributed $59,499 to the Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain ($59,499), 14 other GOP senators and 21 Republican House candidates.
All this while AIG was headed for a fourth quarter 2008 loss of $61.7 billion, the biggest quarterly loss in corporate history.
AIG has received $173 billion in federal aid.
“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay,” President Obama said Monday. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”
Meanwhile, a “tidal wave of public outrage” swamped AIG on Tuesday, the Washington Times reported:
“Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year.
“Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail boxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn’t show up at all.”
2 comments:
isnt it funny how much of a hypocrit obama really is? he hires geitner, after many opposed his nomination stating the position was way over his head,(of course, many have been saying that about obama, also)...he doesnt want to be in washington while the AIG, Fannie and Freddie controversies are going on, so decides to go to california to try to pedal his stimulus plan to the hollywood crowd, while appearing on the late night show (letterman), and exposed a comedic side of him, where he told everyone he was completely disgusted and appalled at what is going on with AIG, especially after he was the second largest recipient of money from AIG, during his campaign...is he going to give it back? doubtful..what a joke, he has become.
He was actually on Jay Leno , not letterman last night. He actually was entertaining but I don't think it is important for him to be entertaining. He needs to stay in Washington and be PRESIDENTIAL. They talked about George not being Presidential but he so far puts Obama to shame in the "Being Presidential" dept. Obama himself took 100,000 from AIG in contributions. To act like he didn't know anything about all this is ridiculous. Geitner either did know about this stuff before hand or should have if he was actually doing his job and the bonus money should have been nipped in the bud from the get go... Fine.. Have your bonus money after you have made a turn around and don't use Tax Payer Bailout money to make these bonus payments. The bail out was to get credit moving again not to pay stupid exec's ridiculous money when they caused the companies to go bust. Rewarding them with bonus's seems RETARDED. They should have instead been fired with no severance plans and not be eligible for unemployment benefits like ordinary people would be if they ran companies into the ground and played games with other people's money.
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