Outrageous inequality facts

from information clearing house... 

Some Outrageous Facts about US Inequality

By Paul Buchheit

July 03, 2012 "Common Dreams" -- Studying inequality in America reveals some facts that are truly hard to believe. Amidst all the absurdity a few stand out.

1. U.S. companies in total pay a smaller percentage of taxes than the lowest-income 20% of Americans.

Total corporate profits for 2011 were $1.97 trillion. Corporations paid $181 billion in federal taxes (9%) and $40 billion in state taxes (2%), for a total tax burden of 11%. The poorest 20% of American citizens pay 17.4% in federal, state, and local taxes.

2. The high-profit, tax-avoiding tech industry was built on publicly-funded research.

The technology sector has been more dependent on government research and development than any other industry. The U.S. government provided about half of the funding for basic research in technology and communications well into the 1980s. Even today, federal grants support about 60 percent of research performed at universities.

IBM was founded in 1911, Hewlett-Packard in 1947, Intel in 1968, Microsoft in 1975, Apple and Oracle in 1977, Cisco in 1984. All relied on government and military innovations. The more recently incorporated Google, which started in 1996, grew out of the Defense Department's ARPANET system and the National Science Foundation's Digital Library Initiative.

The combined 2011 federal tax payment for the eight companies was just 10.6%.

3. The sales tax on a quadrillion dollars of financial sales is ZERO.

The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that total annual derivatives trades were $1.14 quadrillion. The same year, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange reported a trading volume of $1.2 quadrillion.

A quadrillion dollars is the entire world economy, 12 times over. It's enough to give 3 million dollars to every person in the United States. But in a sense it's not real money. Most of it is high-volume nanosecond computer trading, the type that almost crashed our economy. So it's a good candidate for a tiny sales tax. But there is no sales tax.

Go out and buy shoes or an iPhone and you pay up to a 10% sales tax. But walk over to Wall Street and buy a million dollar high-risk credit default swap and pay 0%.

4. Many Americans get just a penny on the dollar.

• For every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.
   
• For every dollar the richest .1% earned in 1980, they've added three more dollars. The poorest 90% have added one cent.
   
• For every dollar of financial securities (e.g., bonds) in the U.S., the bottom 90% of Americans have a penny and a half's worth.
   
• For every dollar of 2008-2010 profits from Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon, General Electric, and Dow Chemicals, the American public got a penny in taxes.

5. Our society allows one man or one family to possess enough money to feed EVERY hungry person on earth.

The United Nations estimates that $30 billion per year is needed to eradicate hunger. Several individuals have more than this amount in personal wealth.

There are 925 million people in the world with insufficient food. According to the World Food Program, it takes about $100 a year to feed a human being. That's $92 billion, about equal to the fortune of the six Wal-Mart heirs.

One Final Outrage...

In 2007 a hedge fund manager (John Paulson) conspired with a financial company (Goldman Sachs) to create packages of risky subprime mortgages, so that in anticipation of a housing crash he could use other people's money to bet against his personally designed sure-to-fail financial instruments. His successful gamble paid him $3.7 billion. Three years later he made another $5 billion, which in the real world would have been enough to pay the salaries of 100,000 health care workers.

As an added insult to middle-class taxpayers, the tax rate on most of Paulson's income was just 15%. As a double insult, he may have paid no tax at all, since hedge fund profits can be deferred indefinitely. As a triple insult, some of his payoff came from the middle-class taxpayers themselves, who bailed out the company (AIG) that had to pay off his bets.

And the people we elect to protect our interests are unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

yes, indeed... truly outrageous...

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Want to know if our financial elites are truly evil...? Read this...

truly appalling in its cynicism and potential for economic destruction, all the while making our super-rich even richer...

Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.

Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.

These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.

“It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house — you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich.

As Greece’s financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country’s problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust.

Last September, the company, the Markit Group of London, introduced the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which is based on such swaps and let traders gamble on Greece shortly before the crisis. Such derivatives have assumed an outsize role in Europe’s debt crisis, as traders focus on their daily gyrations.

A result, some traders say, is a vicious circle. As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece’s debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety — and the whole thing starts over again.

this is a perfect example of the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the current global financial system... there is simply nothing to check the inexorable slide into unfettered greed where money and profits trump all other considerations... as long as the super-rich elites are getting their daily fix of more and more and more money, nothing - absolutely NOTHING - else matters...

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$100M worth of bonuses to be paid out tomorrow by AIG

the good news just never stops...

American International Group plans Wednesday to pay another round of employee bonuses worth about $100 million, said several people familiar with the matter, a year after similar payments at the bailed-out insurance giant infuriated many Americans and inflamed Washington.

This week's payments will go only to employees at the company's Financial Products division who agreed recently to accept between 10 and 20 percent less money than AIG had initially promised them years ago. In return, they are receiving their payments more than a month ahead of schedule.

The company is still scheduled to pay out tens of millions of dollars more in March, mostly to former employees who did not agree to the concessions.

but i'm sure they deserve them...

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Goldman's Blankfein and Treasury's Paulson - one hand washes the other

ya can't tell one player from another without a program...

from the nyt via raw story...

Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wasn’t on Goldman Sachs’ payroll when the US government bailed out his former employer, but he may as well have been.

That’s the implication in a New York Times article, published Saturday, that shows President George W. Bush’s last treasury secretary, a former CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs, had frequent conversations with the current CEO of Goldman during the week of Sept. 16, when the US government handed over $85 billion to rescue the troubled insurance giant AIG.

AIG’s outstanding debts to Goldman Sachs meant that $13 billion of the money handed over to AIG went directly to Goldman Sachs.

“During the week of the AIG bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein spoke two dozen times … far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives,” the Times reports.

The revelation is sure to fuel further claims that the $700-billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, passed by Congress last fall with the support of both major presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, was “gamed” by Paulson in order to help out his colleagues at Goldman — and preserve his own reputation, which he made as the bank’s CEO.

Paulson spoke with Goldman’s CEO in an official capacity a total of 26 times before the treasury secretary was granted an “ethics waiver” that allowed him to be in far closer contact with his former employer than would have otherwise allowed, Reuters notes.

i'm shocked, SHOCKED, i tell you...

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Bernanke tries to counter criticism of the Fed

the la times, in a long article that purports to limn the details of how bernanke is responding to the growing call for fed scrutiny up to and including its dismantling, instead ends up only trying to elicit sympathy for poor beleaguered ben without bothering to elaborate on what is, imho, well-justified criticism (see previous post)...

[O]dds favor Bernanke to be reappointed by Obama. Bernanke has strong backing from economists and is well regarded in the White House, where he has had a long and good relationship with the president's economics team, including Christina Romer, with whom Bernanke played bridge when they were both teaching at Princeton, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers. The latter is often mentioned as a potential candidate for Fed chief, but is generally seen as an underdog because of his forceful style.

[...]

With global finances and the Fed's reputation imperiled, Bernanke has asserted his leadership. In addition to dropping its key lending rate to banks to nearly zero interest, the Fed has taken unprecedented action by invoking emergency powers under the 1913 Federal Reserve Act to prop up Bear Stearns Cos., American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and other faltering institutions. Bernanke's Fed has bought hundreds of billions of dollars of government debt to drive down mortgage rates.

ya gotta love the list of impressive "accomplishments" in that last paragraph... "propping up" a.i.g., citi, bear stearns and bofa sure would make the top of MY list of major efforts carefully crafted to help out the mass of u.s. citizenry...

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The real reason Eliot Spitzer got taken down - he's telling the truth about the Federal Reserve

spitzer's got a real pair to be speaking out like this after our super-rich elites tried to shut him up through abject humiliation...

from msnbc via raw story...

The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.

In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash that it gave to the struggling banks.

Spitzer — who built a reputation as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” for his zealous prosecutions of corporate crime as New York’s attorney-general and then resigned as the state’s governor over revelations he had paid for prostitutes — seemed to agree with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to “America’s greatest theft and cover-up ever.”

Advocating in favor of a House bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Spitzer said: “The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left.

“The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.

“The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through — conduit payments — to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didn’t get stock in those banks, they didn’t ask what was going on — this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.

“You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve], it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous, it is time for Congress to say enough of this. And to give them more power now is crazy.

watch it...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

when are the crooks that are running this show going to face some accountability...? i'm really, REALLY tired of waiting...

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Fuckers (stronger letter to follow)

they're beneath contempt...

AIG Is Preparing to Pay Millions More in Bonuses

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The company has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.

ya know what...? the average u.s. taxpayer, myself included, is a full-on chump... we're being sheared like the sheep we are...

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Dylan Ratigan (formerly) of CNBC's Fast Money 'splains it all for you and then disappears

from co-blogger, jim burke, who, in a past life, was obviously a fan of the pbs show, "where in the world is carmen sandiego"...

Where in the world is Dylan Ratigan? He is the host of CNBC "Fast Money".

Before we play this game, maybe you don't know who this guy is. A little blurb from Wikipedia below.

From the Wikipedia entry on Dylan Ratigan

In Ratigan’s final CNBC broadcast from the floor of the NYSE he reported on what he called “an important story developing” that Goldman Sachs and “a variety of European banks”, in his assessment and that of his guests, essentially “perpetrated securities fraud” and an “insurance fraud scam” against AIG—and, by extension, the government and taxpayers funding that insurance company’s “bailout”—by insuring their questionable investment vehicles and, upon their devaluation, making claims on them to be paid by AIG “at 100 cents on the dollar” despite all of the markdowns “being forced upon every other” entity including the government, banks, shareholders, bond holders, taxpayers and homeowners. [6]

“I think that it should be a bigger political issue than whether somebody bought an airplane. Forget the private jets, forget who got a million dollar bonus. "Fifty billion dollars”, he emphasized, minimizing what he saw as populist side issues to “the real question” of how “government policy makers” are to deal with the “problems of contract law” inherent in the agreements of businesses receiving government assistance during the financial crisis. [7]

“The banks are being asked to take ‘haircuts’ on their toxic assets, why are the Goldmans and the Deutsche Banks of the world not being asked to take haircuts on their toxic credit default swaps? It’s a real question. I will continue to pursue it for sure, I hope others will as well.” Ratigan praised New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s subpoena of AIG to determine the bank payouts as “legitimate inquiry” and looked forward to “a body of lawmakers in Washington D.C. who are going to ask, it appears, some of the same questions that I’m asking.” [8]

Ratigan is the guy who broke the Enron debacle in the media.

Ratigan recently did a radio interview that is absolutely staggering. Listen via the link below and keep in mind this guy was still an active talking head for CNBC.

http://www.fedupusa.info/Dylan_Ratigan_Interview

Pretty much sums it all up.

Now he's gone. CNBC posted the reason as a dispute with the producer. Hmmm, office politics? Seems to me he was axed for leaving the reservation.

Now for the game, yippeee!

Question # 1
If you report for a corporately owned organization (CNBC/GE) and you attack the Bankers and their Politicians, should you expect a merit raise or a visit from Uncle Vito and his pal, Whispering Jimmy?

Question # 2
Upon learning how Whispering Jimmy got his nickname, do you decide to leave your job or continue with your investigation?

Question # 3
Upon leaving your job and shitcanning the investigation, should you leave a forwarding address?

Bonus Question:
Where is Dylan Ratigan?

I am paralyzed with anticipation awaiting answers. This is gonna get weird, I suspect.

muy interesante... thanks, jim...

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Keep on printin' them worthless dollars but at least A.I.G.'s Liddy is on the run

i wonder how many printing presses have burned out and had to be replaced at the mint...

The Federal Reserve yesterday escalated its massive campaign to stabilize the economy, saying it would flood the financial system with an additional $1.2 trillion.

The decision by the Fed to buy government bonds and mortgage-related securities is designed to lower borrowing costs for home mortgages and other types of loans, thereby stimulating economic activity. The central bank, effectively, will print more money to pay for the purchases.

Combined with the billions already deployed by the Fed, the new money dwarfs even the biggest government bailouts of financial companies.

Yesterday's announcement amounts to a recognition by Fed leaders that the economy has gotten much worse than they had forecast at their last policy-making meeting, in January. It also is their attempt to show market participants that, three months after cutting short-term interest rates to zero, they still have more tools to try to bolster the economy.

such frigging insanity...

at least aig's liddy was called on the carpet...

The chief executive of American International Group, trying to quell the wrath of the public and politicians over millions of dollars in bonuses, told Congress yesterday that he had just asked a few hundred employees of the beleaguered insurance company to give back at least half of the extra pay.

Edward M. Liddy, brought in last fall to lead the giant firm the government had just rescued from the brink of insolvency, arrived on Capitol Hill with an understanding of the outrage that has erupted over the bonuses -- but not complete acquiescence.

"We've heard the American people loudly and clearly these past few days," Liddy told an irate House subcommittee, saying that he found the bonuses "distasteful."

But he defended the rationale behind the payments, totaling $165 million to AIG's troubled Financial Products division, reiterating that they were intended to prevent the company from collapsing by deterring vital employees from leaving. He said that "some" of the Financial Products employees have returned their bonuses but did not specify how many. Asked by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to provide the names of those who have kept the money, Liddy balked, saying he feared for their safety in light of written threats, including one that said, "All the executives and their families should be executed with piano wire around their necks."

he may be on the run but i don't hear much of an acceptance of the reality of just how badly he and his ilk in the financial services and banking industries have been systematically fleecing their fellow citizens...

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You have a "horrible, horrible, horrible feeling this is going to end badly...?" That's cuz it's been rotten to the core from the get-go...

aig has rapidly become a symbol of all that is wrong with both our financial system and our government, and it's now a litmus test for the obama administration... if this brand-new president, his treasury secretary, and his advisors want to retain a shred of credibility for their "change" agenda, they've got to find a way to deal with this effectively and show the american people that they aren't just funding a give-away to the already super-rich, cuz that's for goddam sure what it looks like...

Attorneys working for the Fed had been examining the matter for months and determined that the retention payments couldn't be touched because AIG would face costly lawsuits and be subject to penalties from states and foreign governments. Administration officials said over the weekend that they agreed with that assessment.

check this...

A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. 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 inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.

"It's a mob effect," one senior executive said. "It's putting people's lives in danger."

Politicians and the public spent yesterday demanding that AIG rescind payouts that they said rewarded recklessness and greed at a company being bailed out with $170 billion in taxpayer funds. But company officials contend that the uproar is scaring away the very employees who understand AIG Financial Products' complex trades and who are trying to dismantle the division before it further endangers the world's economy.

"It's going to blow up," said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly."

do i smell a domestic military deployment in the air...? (see previous posts here, here, and here...)

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An excellent question from Think Progress

Why Are AIG’s Contracts Sacrosanct But Not Union Workers’ Contracts?

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Obama stirs from his stupor and slaps Geithner's hand

and about fucking time too...

President Obama vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.

“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

"populist backlash" is putting it mildly... i think obama had a vision of people with torches, rakes, and hoes storming the white house... also, "trying to stop" ain't good enough... in 12-step language, "trying" is "lying"...

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Bailouts to pay AIG bonuses...? This shit must cease...!

"...the firm is contractually obligated to pay them..."

hello...? a case can be made under legal precedent that the conditions that necessitated an unprecedented $170B bailout in the first place also create the conditions under which such contracts can be voided...

A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout

The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

Word of the bonuses last week stirred such deep consternation inside the Obama administration that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.

The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company’s senior executives and 6,400 employees across the sprawling corporation. Mr. Geithner last week pressured A.I.G. to cut the $9.6 million going to the top 50 executives in half and tie the rest to performance.

what a bunch of crap...

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Have I mentioned lately just how DISGUSTED I am watching money being thrown at failed companies?

huh...? have i...? huh...? huh...?

The U.S. government threw a new $30 billion lifeline to American International Group Inc on Sunday as the embattled insurer prepared to report the biggest quarterly loss in corporate history.

AIG's board approved a new rescue package that also includes more lenient terms on a government investment in its preferred shares and a lower interest rate on a government credit line, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Details will be announced on Monday when AIG is expected to report a fourth-quarter loss of about $60 billion -- roughly $460,000 per minute.

fuck 'em...! these outfits have led us directly down the garden path to financial and economic RUIN and we're rewarding and reinforcing their behavior...??? do we honestly believe for one friggin' second they're somehow going to magically transform themselves into paragons of financial responsibility on the back of u.s. taxpayers...??? i don't freakin' think so...

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'Scuse me, but I have a VERY strong suspicion about WHY there's opposition to an automaker bailout

yes, i'm cynical, but you already knew that...

i was watching cnn last evening where paulson and bernanke were testifying before congress on the bailout... this was interspersed with stories about the big three automakers also scheduled to appear with hat in hand... now, i don't know about you, but i've been watching our - taxpayers' - money being handed out by the billions to banks, insurance companies, investment brokers and damn near everybody else that passes by, and i was sitting there trying to make sense out of why, fercryinoutloud, our super-rich elites, personified by paulson and bernanke, people who've been so free with our money up to now, were suddenly so hard over against helping detroit... then it dawned on me...

what sets detroit's situation apart from the banks, insurance companies, etc...? hmmmmmm...?? think about it... yep, that's right... unions AND a very large, blue-collar labor force... what is it that our elite, corporatist, super-rich overlords hate beyond almost everything else...? hmmmmmmm...? that's right... unions... who works for banks, insurance companies and investment brokers...? hmmmmmm...?? the super-rich power brokers, that's who... why would these people who are so busy feeding at the taxpayer trough pass up the chance to completely destroy the unions AND take out a large swath of the u.s. middle class in one fell swoop...? what a golden opportunity...!

don't get me wrong... i'm not favoring a detroit bailout... i'm just trying to understand an apparent contradiction... why is aig "too big to fail," but detroit, with almost three million jobs at stake, can be flushed down the toilet without a backward glance...?

just sayin'...

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"Negates its fundamental principles in its behavior" - HAHAHAHAHA...! < cough, snort > HAHAHAHA...!

< wipes tears from eyes >

Is the United States no longer the global beacon of unfettered, free-market capitalism?

In extending a last-minute $85 billion lifeline to American International Group, the troubled insurer, Washington has not only turned away from decades of rhetoric about the virtues of the free market and the dangers of government intervention, but it has also probably undercut future American efforts to promote such policies abroad.

“I fear the government has passed the point of no return,” said Ron Chernow, a leading American financial historian. “We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams.”

The bailout package for A.I.G., on top of earlier government support for Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has stunned even European policy makers accustomed to government intervention — even as they acknowledge the shock of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

“For opponents of free markets in Europe and elsewhere, this is a wonderful opportunity to invoke the American example,” said Mario Monti, the former antitrust chief at the European Commission. “They will say that even the standard-bearer of the market economy, the United States, negates its fundamental principles in its behavior.”

not that the u.s. hasn't been the master of hypocrisy right along, but these last few weeks have put it right up there in neon lights for all to see...

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HAHAHAHA...!" title="Bookmark using any bookmark manager!" target="_blank">

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The house of cards is falling faster and faster

we're in free fall now...



check the quote, "no end in sight..."

A.I.G. Bailout Fails to Stem Global Stocks Slump

One of the most stunning government bailouts in American history failed on Wednesday to stem the runaway fears engulfing the global financial system.

Investors embarked on a frenzied flight to safety on Wednesday, just hours after the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department propped up American International Group, the ailing insurance giant, with an $85 billion loan. And many wondered which once-proud institution would be the next to fail.

“There’s a growing sense that there’s no end to this in sight,” Edward Yardeni, the investment strategist, said.

Investors, seeking security in a market that has so far refused to stabilize, poured money on Wednesday into ultra-safe government notes, driving the yield on short-term Treasury bills to the lowest levels in 50 years.

Stocks around the world plummeted. The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 200 points, despite the federal government’s efforts to prop up A.I.G. The move avoided a potentially devastating collapse of the company, but investors appeared already to have shifted their attention elsewhere.

pretty stunning, eh...?

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No two ways about it, this is just plain wrong

i thought the fed had said no... obviously, the fed isn't yet through screwing the american people... we must still have a drop of blood left in our veins...

Fed Close to Deal to Give A.I.G. $85 Billion Loan

In an extraordinary turn, the Federal Reserve was close to a deal Tuesday night to take a nearly 80 percent stake in the troubled giant insurance company, the American International Group, in exchange for an $85 billion loan, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

In return, the Fed will receive warrants, which give it an ownership stake. All of A.I.G.’s assets will be pledged to secure the loan, these people said.

yeah, well the bank consortium loan fell through, so, instead of letting yet another gaggle of greedy sons-of-bitches go down the toilet like they should, you and i are going to be providing the bailout...

The Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase had been trying to arrange a $75 billion loan for A.I.G. to stave off the financial crisis caused by complex debt securities and credit default swaps. The Federal Reserve stepped in after it became clear Tuesday afternoon that the banking consortium would not be able to complete the deal.

Without the help, A.I.G. was expected to be forced to file for bankruptcy protection.

The need for the loans became necessary after the major credit ratings agencies downgraded A.I.G. late Monday, a move that likely to have forced the company to turn over billions of dollars in collateral to its derivatives trading partners worsening its financial health.

Until this week, it would have been unthinkable for the Federal Reserve to bail out an insurance company, and A.I.G.’s request for help from the Fed of just a few days ago was rebuffed.

did i mention that this really sucks big-time...?

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Fuck no, AIG... Go screw yourself... B of A can kiss my ass and Lehman can put it where the sun don't shine...

i'm on vacation visiting my son and his wife in montana and taking a well-deserved break from the non-stop ugliness of national and world events, but i simply can't let these pass without comment...

first of all, not only no to aig, but FUCK, NO...!

A.I.G. Seeks $40 Billion in Fed Aid to Survive

The American International Group is seeking a bridge loan from the Federal Reserve as it faces a potential downgrade from credit ratings agencies.

and, as far as these three criminal enterprises, i hope b of a chokes on merrill and lehman deserves to die...

Offer for Merrill Accepted; Lehman Nears Liquidation

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for about $50 billion, while Lehman Brothers headed toward bankruptcy.

p.s. for aig, lehman and merrill: boo-fucking-hoo..

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