Wonder-Boy Under Fire!

Given the recent brouhaha over the AIG bonuses, "Wonder-Boy" Tim Geithner has fallen under harsh criticism and scrutiny of how much and when he knew of these "contractually-Guaranteed" payouts for unsuccessful AIG execs; with some even calling for his resignation!

Now his defenders are quick to come to his aid indicating that it was under Bush that the original money was paid out to AIG (haven't we heard this somewhere before?) But what they craftily leave out is that it was Geithner and not Paulson who orchestrated the whole AIG bailout from the start. His allies also state that he is the "ONLY" one who really understands the TARP program so who else can we get to run it? After all look how smart he is! Yet I guess not smart enough to understand the tax code so that he could pay his own taxes...

And isn’t a little scary that out of all the successful people in our country he is the only one smart enough to do this job???

Now I'm not defending the AIG slugs that paid and received $165mm of our money for failed performance. I think they should be publicly flogged and made to have their next corporate outing at Gitmo.

But the truth is that this has been a comedy of errors with no signs that any of this bailout or Tarp has even worked. Most of the money given with no strings attached by the way, has gone overseas for other investments and has done little to stimulate the economy, ease lending markets, create jobs or really stabilize any of these so-called companies too big to fail! I liken some of this to the dot-com days when we measured companies not by their growth but more so by how fast their “burn-rate” was of cash infused by outside sources. And yet we kept pouring it in.

Now after all of this money has been unconditionally given and distributed the Congress is all of a sudden up in arms “Oh how did this happen?” what a travesty! The real travesty here is that these SOB’s are still in office! How many times are we going to let these idiots turn the other way on allowing things to happen and then come back and try to make themselves look good by trying to fix a problem they caused that most likely could have been avoided or at best handled differently? Now they’re calling for the return of the bonuses or even a 1000% tax on them to recoup the money!

Again I’m not defending AIG or the bonuses. They were given an opportunity and they took advantage of it. Sort of like when Franklin Raines restructured his comp plan at Fannie Mae under the watchful eyes of Chris Dodd & Barney Frank and walked away with a cool $91mm in 6 years! Now I didn’t hear talk of recouping or overtaxing that money!

And now Barney Frank has the “balls” to come on TV and get critical of AIG! Does this man not own a mirror? Perhaps we should send him one so that he could really see what a criminal looks like!