Good Richard's Almanac: Obama's Willful Negligence -- Update: Dodd's Folly

March 18, 2009

Obama's Willful Negligence -- Update: Dodd's Folly

Via CNN...

President Obama said Wednesday that no one in his administration had been responsible for supervising ailing insurance giant AIG but that ultimately, the buck stops with him. President Obama spoke outside the White House on Wednesday before heading to California. "Nobody here drafted those contracts; nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in," he said outside the White House. "[But] we are responsible, though. The buck stops with me."

Nobody in his administration was responsible for supervising AIG? Wrong! As I previously noted, the AIG bailout started on September 16, 2008 when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then headed by Tim Geithner gave AIG $85 billion. If the president of the bank making the loan isn't responsible, who the hell is?

Obama chomps voraciously on his foot...

People are right to be angry. I am angry. ... People are rightly outraged about these particular bonuses," he said. "But just as outrageous is the culture that these bonuses are a symptom of that have existed for far too long, a situation where excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk-taking have all made us vulnerable and left us holding the bag.

No, no, no! Congress (of which Barack Obama was a member when this started) left taxpayers holding the bag. Obama, as President, demanded that congress move swiftly to further bury us taxpayers.

If there really is a problem with excess greed and excess risk on Wall Street, the American taxpayer would've never, ever been left holding the bag if Obama, Bush and Congress had not decided to bail out these failing companies.

They give our money to AIG. They give our money to Ford and GM. They give our money to Amtrak. Obama and the rest of the louses in D.C. continue to use our money to cover everyone else's bad decisions. Then, when there's even a hint of bad P.R. resulting from it, they blame everyone else.

Obama, this is your fault!

Congress, this is your fault!

George W. Bush, this is your fault!

Get the federal government off the backs of the American taxpayer!

Update

Chris Dodd tells Wolf Blitzer the administration asked him to add the AIG bonus protection to the stimulus bill...

DODD: Well, listen to what happened here. We wrote the language in the bill to deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive compensation — executive compensation, that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill. That’s what I would have liked to have seen maintained in the bill, but for that language there would have been no language in the bill to deal with any of this at all, including language that allowed them to reach back.

The administration, it has been widely reported, had problems with that amendment, as others did as well. And they came and said, we’d like to modify that amendment.

...

DODD: Well, going back and reviewing, obviously, and looking at it. But the point I want to make to you, Wolf, is, again, I would have preferred we kept my language as it left the Senate unanimously. In fact, there were objections when I wrote the language even before it left the Senate. I didn’t negotiate with myself with this amendment. I wasn’t trying to change it on my own, obviously, as has been pointed out by Dana. You had — the administration had expressed reservations about the amendment. They came to us and asked for modifications to the amendment. The alternative was, of course, losing the amendment entirely, which was a possibility."

...

BLITZER: Well, so just to be precise, what we’re talking about, this mysterious loophole that was inserted at the last minute that allowed these bonuses in effect — now these bonuses, $165 million, to go forward. What I hear you saying is that, you personally, you did this in order — at the request of officials at the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner, among others.

DODD: Well, I didn’t say who it was. But just say this, I wouldn’t have modified my own amendment at my own insistence. I mean, I spent a long time to having people try to be — change it. And obviously they came. And the alternative was losing the amendment. And I didn’t think we should do that at all.

BLITZER: Who asked you at the Treasury Department to do it?

DODD: Well, they were people, obviously, coming and negotiating with the staffs back and forth. And I don’t know their names specifically, it was at a staff level, people were talking about it.

Despite outright fingering the Obama administration for initiating the AIG bonus protection, Dodd is arguing he had the correct intent all along -- to limit bonuses. But, because he found opposition to such language, he claims it was better to explicitly protect the bonuses than lose the bonus restriction altogether.

Err. Does not compute. Divide by zero.

Senator, if you explicitly protect a bonus, that's not the same thing as restricting a bonus. Understand?

Posted by Richard at March 18, 2009 1:24 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.goodrichardsalmanac.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/212