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AIG - the biggest shark of all
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: March 28th, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/18/...
There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York's top lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the greatest financial scandal in U.S. history. Instead of taking bonuses, the culprits should be taking perp walks. The real culprits are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very people "principally responsible for the firm's meltdown." As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank: "The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals' bonuses to be 100 percent of their 2007 bonuses. Eleven of the individuals who received 'retention' bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million." But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power.
Note: For an excellent analysis of "the real AIG conspiracy", click here. For lots more on the hidden realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.
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