I love how this story starts out (paraphrasing), “If you were furious with the AIG bonuses, just wait until you hear about this!” From Newsweek: There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters [...]

Let’s face one very stark fact right now…there are no ideal solutions here. At least this current plan from Geithner allows us to recover at least some of the money, but the banks can’t eat this. So taxpayers are going to have to foot this bill. Sorry, but that’s how this has to go down. [...]

Ed Rendell, Michael Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger share the stage and talk about the economic stimulus package, the financial crisis and the road ahead. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that folks in the press corps are starting to push the meme that the administration doesn’t know what it’s doing. Most are acting [...]

A Republican black mayoral candidate in Jackson, Mississippi wants to bring back the noose to fight crime. George Lambus is the only Republican in the dozen-candidate field for the office. He is considered a long shot in the heavily African-American and Democratic city. The racially explosive subject has brought consternation to many residents. One resident said [...]

You knew it had to happen… Hey, it worked in England… Thoughts?

The campaign never ends? Right now, grassroots organizers across the country are gearing up for tomorrow’s Pledge Project Canvasses, the first large-scale effort to organize support for President Obama’s economic plan since the election. Anyone who was on last night’s conference call for the event hosts can tell you that there was a feeling of [...]

Politifact tracked 513 promises Obama made during the primaries, and yesterday took a look at his top 10. Of the 10 promises, 1 has been fully kept, 1 has been kept via compromise, 5 are in the works and 3 have had no action taken on them. I’ll have more on those last 3 later, [...]

Sure, tomorrow there could be a picture more awesome than this, but today this one is grand champion. Bringing this back around… The young boy is AIG, the dancing lady is the GOP, the shortsless guy is Geithner and the older woman just coming into the room is the American public. Discuss.

Then you better reject part of the stimulus package. At least that’s what Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal and now Sarah Palin are doing… JUNEAU — Gov. Sarah Palin is refusing to accept over 30 percent of the federal economic stimulus money being offered to Alaska, including dollars for schools, energy assistance and social services. [...] [...]

Unless you’re living in a cave, it’s hard not to notice how many places our president is showing up, from prime-time speeches to late-night talk shows to magazines to YouTube. He’s everywhere. But is he risking overexposure? Part of the dignity of the Oval Office comes from a sense of distance, says Robert Thompson, founding [...]

I think it’s been well established by now that Fox News is unabashedly right wing, and now it’s obvious that MSNBC is more than willing to become a purely left wing answer to them. Case in point…popular partisan talker Ed Schultz is being considered for a talk show on the net. From New York Observer: [...]

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has their raw numbers on Obama’s budget items and they’re much bigger than the administration’s. Now, to the best of my knowledge, these numbers don’t include the cost savings that would come as a result of his multiple agendas, but nonetheless… From NY Times: The office’s estimates of deficits in [...]

Since Nick raised the issue of the Constitutionality of Congresses efforts to recoup the bonuses paid to AIG executives, I figured it would be worthwhile to share this post I wrote yesterday on my personal blog: The hyperbolic rage against the AIG bonuses has finally transformed itself into legislation: While American International Group Inc.’s chief [...]

Let me see if I have this correct:  The administration knew about the AIG bonuses weeks ago and chose to do nothing about it for fear of legal challenges from AIG.  Legal challenges.  From a company that the government owns. In fact, Tim Geithner was so afraid of lawsuits that he made Senator Chris Dodd [...]

From a NY Times Article…

Given all the press the AIG bonuses have garnered, you’d think our only economic problem was a few nearsighted/greedy execs at one insurance firm. Today, the House took AIG backlash to the next level by passing a bill which would levy heavy taxes on such bonuses. Specifically: The bill would levy a 90 percent tax [...]

Looks like the London branch is mostly responsible for the mismanagement, and Hank Greenberg explains in detail what happened that led to this disaster. Here’s the thing…if most of these bonuses are going to Londoners who we can’t afford to lose because they’re the only people who can wind down all of these accounts, then [...]

What would happen if the dollar wasn’t the world’s reserve currency? Well, we may just find out if an U.N. panel has its way. From Reuters: Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, [...]

The AIG bonus plot thickens, but only slightly. Because while it appears that people in the Treasury department knew about the bonuses, they didn’t think it was necessary to inform their new boss about them? From TIME: “Treasury staff was informed about the new bonuses in a Feb. 28 memo that the March 15 [bonus-payment] [...]