The government giveth, the government taketh away.
Taxcashblog.com
|
Denouncing a “squandering of the people’s money,” lawmakers voted decisively Thursday to impose a 90 percent tax on millions of dollars in employee bonuses paid by troubled insurance giant AIG and other bailed-out companies.
The House vote was 328-93. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate and President Barack Obama quickly signaled general support for the concept.
Republicans took Democrats to task for rushing to tax AIG bonuses worth an estimated $165 million after the majority party stripped from last month’s economic stimulus bill a provision that could have banned such payouts.
AIG has received $182.5 billion in federal bailout money and is now 80 percent government-owned.
Obama administration special envoy Richard Holbooke was on AIG’s board of directors in early 2008, when the insurance company committed to the bonuses, and during the previous years of aggressive investment strategies that brought the firm to brink of collapse. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday: “Mr. Holbrooke had nothing to do with and knew nothing about the bonuses.”
Will this make things better, or is it just a “look good now” tactic for Congress and the White House?
That’s a nice way to skirt contract law. And I suppose that they’ll next tax the execs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government-sponsored entities that are at the very heart of the crisis) who also received six-seven figure retention bonuses…
The next 90+% tax law will be directed against blog operators
#61–Paddy -O- Clueless==what could any board do?
Paying the bonuses was specifically authorized by law and required by contract.
Any Board should do “what” in that circumstance especially when they all get similar bonuses on their own home turf?
Only idiots have blind faith in silly solutions that “don’t work.”
Congress actually was forced into doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons. If the great capitalist system through its checks and balances cannot fix the rape of our economy by CEO’s then its time for confiscatory tax policy to do it.
Not just AIG–all of them. Yea!!!! Then make regulations so that this 200x-300x lopsided criminal ceo compensation gets corrected at the source.
Curser, use your brain. The admin and Congress (Dodd) which means the Democrates blew it on this one.
Now they are trying to cover their butts by passing a law that even most of them think is going to get the ax and waste a lot of money for nothing gained because it isn’t Constitutional.
That’s why the Reps have been happily jumping up and down screaming, “Look at the stupid ejuts! Look at what they dood!”
That you lack the smarts to pick up on the double mistake or the character to acknowledge it if you have the smarts to recognize it says much about you.
Dodd says it was an honest mistake and I believer him. I’d believe him even more if he wasn’t the biggest taker on their tab but that doesn’t mean he took money to pass this thing.
#61, Cow-Paddy, Ignorant Shit Talking Sociopath, Retired Mall Rent-A-Cop, Pretend Constitutional Scholar, Fake California Labor Law Expert, Pseudo Military Historian, Phony Climate Scientist, and Real Leading Troll Extraordinare,
The government would win any court challenge. And, quite easily.
You see, being the idiot you are, you can only understand little words and simple thoughts, so I’m typing very slow, just for you. And I’ll try to stay away from big polysyllabic legalese as well.
The government owns 80% of AIG. That makes them a vested majority partner. Not just a stockholder, but THE MAJORITY stockholder. In short, it is their company.
Then there is the part where these employees endangered the company. That is usually through fraudulent activities. Under the common law, one is never allowed to benefit from their own error or illegality.
These employees are the same ones that wrote the paper they are now trying to wind down. They are bad because these employees failed to verify that they were as good as claimed or even held valid loans. The employees were not only paid to write this bad paper, most of them also received bonuses for them too.
So by signing contracts to clean up a mess they willfully made, knowing they weren’t worth anything, is fraud. That would make the “bonus” contracts unenforceable. Hence they don’t deserve the bonuses, whether they are called “retention” bonuses or whatever.
The only payment they deserve is their negotiated salary. And if that is excessive, ask them to take a smaller salary or fire their asses. Right now there are enough Wall Street MBAs unemployed that would love to take a short term contract.
if this makes to law, we’re totally screwed.
this will be political license to screw anyone
who makes “too” much money that isn’t part of the
elitist club who isnt paying payola…
-s
ghost in the machine has looked it over
It’s just a piece of fecal matter put out there as voting record bait for that bucket of mud to be slung in the 2010/12 elections I guess mob appeasement might have had some thing to do with it too.
This wont even get out of the Senate and Obama would never sign it.
No wonder the House looks like a bunch of underclassmen come on kids grow up and get back to work.
the ghost has spoken
Total BS…. the Gov has been scraping off the top for years. Nothing to see here… move on, people.
#66, way to be devoid of facts.
I think I’ll trust the AIG CEO who dealt out the bonuses, when he says it was for retention AFTER most people were aware of the problems at the company.
Amazing, isn’t it, how everyone blames “Congress”, and all those Senators and Representatives are evil. Except their own.
Thus, we end up with a few like NC Strom Thurmon and that NE guy, er, uh, yeah, Ted Kennedy forever.
What ever happened to term limits? Haven’t heard much about that recently. Off your Congress goes, passing laws, until it’s a year and a half until re-election time, and then off they go, doing nothing but trying to get re-elected.
I wouldn’t mind owning a few.
Missed the last week of grandstanding nonsense by our beloved legislators. Three phrases come to mind:
Smoke and mirrors
Bread and circuses
Sound and fury
How infantile this bunch is! But I guess that’s the norm (see posts 1-72 above) in the country these days. Are there no adults left?
#22 – I was referring to the congress, not the president, with my engineer comment.
Congress is the power in the country. If we populated it with people who actually know how to create wealth, rather than redistibute it (after skimming off the top… like most lawyers) we’d be in much better shape.
Well, regardless of the AIG money, do you really think the stimulus plan will work. I have some doubts, and am certain in the long term will raise the debt level as well raise the likelihood of huge inflationary pressure later on. I was looking the other day, at a site,
http://www.recessioninfocenter.com
where it was showing the cyclicality in the economy. Maybe we should just let the cycle take its course. Just my 2 cents.
I agree these overpaid blowhards should not get any kind of bonus for such historically blatant poor performance. They should be fired!
However; this method of lawmaking is a very scary and dangerous precedent to set, allowing law makers write a law that reaches back in time.
Basically if these law maker’s would read, earnestly deliberate and understand what they are signing into law, this would never happen.
This only encourages lawmakers everywhere to only be more lazier, then they are now. If a law they pass doesn’t work, the way a lobbyist told them it would, they can just write a retroactive punitive law.
Great, now the government has set precedence to arbitrarily tax whatever select group they want.
The great experiment has failed.