Hell yeah! They can put me in charge of foreign currency trading market things and stuff.
Maybe the buck stops with Chris Dodd who amended the porkulus bill to allow bonuses. Of course he denies it now. What a F’in schmuck.
Of couse now they want to tax all the bonuses at 90% to cover their tracks. What a bunch of ass clowns. The noble act of saying the buck stops here is kind of hollow in this case.
You will see that a BIG part of the problem is Hank Paulson, pushing for AIG to save those companies on the hook if they failed, namely Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JPMorgan. It was Paulson back in September with Bush saying they had to save this company or we were all doomed and now we know we were all duped.
There is no shortage of blame here but Congress was bullied by Paulson and his fear tactics (reminds me of the push to go to war with Bush/Cheney).
Congress has once again shown they are completely out of touch and can be pushed around by anyone who creates the most fear.
Honestly, we should get rid of all the sitting members of the House and Senate and have a do over.
Damn Matti-boy, I see with obamarama now in office, you can put away the viagra, because all you need now is your daily “i love obama” talk to get that old boner hard so you can get your daily obamagasm…
joke time…
mattinsf, yahay yahoo and some other troll are sitting in a hottub, a big glob of sperm floats to the surface, they all look at eachother and at the same time and say, “who farted?”…
“Matt’s just trying to rebut my trenchant observation about the fact of Dubya’s class and distinction in choosing not to join the choir of folks criticizing our current president for perceived slip-ups.”
C’mon Kahuna, you know the truth. Once you go through several years of having that load on your shoulders, once you dump it, you’re so glad it’s gone, the last thing on your mind is criticizing the next guy. With his wife’s health and getting to not work 20 hrs a day, I’m pretty sure he’s just enjoying his permanent vacation.
No doubt. Would that a few of the rest (Cheney, Gore and Carter come immediately to mind) could follow that simple prescription for a more restful life.
T.
Complete thread hijack to this partisan bickering: President Harry S Truman, he of the “The Buck Stops Here” sign on the desk.
Quiz Question: What was his middle name ?
Now back to our discussion…
Stavensky. The buck stops with that answer.
Actually Sir you are wrong…his middle name was “S”. His parents did a quirky thing, as did many Scots-Irish of the era.
I gave the wrong answer and that wrong answer buck stops here.
To make up for it here is some classic REM…
Actually Sir you are wrong…his middle name was “S”. His parents did a quirky thing, as did many Scots-Irish of the era.
That’s 'cause they were all drunk on triple-malt, laprohaig, and Guiness stout. Damn bog Irish and skirt-wearing Highlanders (hee-hee).
T.
Michael Stipe with hair. Interesting.
I thought the buck always stopped with strippers?
The dogs in the street know that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a long held agenda to go to war with Iraq; before they were elected and certainly before 9/11. The used the convenience of 9/11 to stir up misplaced fear and that combined with a completely bogus yarn about WMDs they pushed the country into an unnecessary and unconsciouable war.
As the years progressed and their lies were one by one exposed, the pointed fingers of blame at everyone around them and beneath them. Colin Powell was fired, as was Rumsfeld. The CIA were blamed for faulty intelligence gathering. The military was blamed for poor planning and threat assesment. The media was blamed for not telling the story the White House wanted us to believe. Everyone was to blame but the architects of the calamity themselves, our supposed leaders.
I always assumed that with leadership came responsibility and with responsibility a duty to accept ownership for failure as well as success. Bush and Cheney accepted ownership for the initial military success…MISSION ACCOMPLISHED…and then ran for cover knocking everyone around them under the bus as the shit began to hit the fan and things started to go wrong.
This is certainly not the only example of Bush/Cheney refusing to own their failure, but it certainly is the most obvious. Between them I can’t think of a single significant mea culpa over the 8 long horrible years of their rule.
How refreshing it is therefore to have a President in the Oval Office who today told the nation, “the buck stops with me” in relation to AIG bonuses, even if the facts show that at least 50% if not more of the buck lies with the previous administration who gave AIG billions no strings attached.
Its nice to have a leader running this country instead of a pair of blame shifters and scapegoat herders.
You are so grossly uninformed on this topic. Go read the Dodd Amendment and get back to us Matt.
So President Obama didn’t say “the buck stops with me”? I must have been hallucinating then because it was on 3 channels tonight.
**You are so grossly uninformed on this topic. Go read the Dodd Amendment and get back to us Matt. **
The Dodd amendment is going to be the second smokescreen to distract the public from Paulson’s role to prop up Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. AIG is the first “fall guy” and Dodd will be the second.
Yet, GS and others will remain unscathed, thanks to Bush/Paulson.
Paulson started this mess and no matter how anyone slices it, the buck stops with him. Bush and the entire Congress back in September let him get away with this and they continue to do it now, but it started long ago.
**Honestly, we should get rid of all the sitting members of the House and Senate and have a do over. **
That would be great. Too bad we don’t have a parlimentary system where that could happen and where we could have 3rd party representation.
**You are so grossly uninformed on this topic. Go read the Dodd Amendment and get back to us Matt. **
The Dodd amendment is going to be the second smokescreen to distract the public from Paulson’s role to prop up Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. AIG is the first “fall guy” and Dodd will be the second.
Yet, GS and others will remain unscathed, thanks to Bush/Paulson.
Paulson started this mess and no matter how anyone slices it, the buck stops with him. Bush and the entire Congress back in September let him get away with this and they continue to do it now, but it started long ago.
Without that language in the ammendment this would not be an issue so how exactly is that a smokescreen and how is Paulson responsible for this bonus debacle? The bonuses were well known–the amounts and the date they would be paid. Obama and/or Dodd are responsible for that language. It’s on page 404 of the document that Obama signed into law. Dodd is blaming Obama now. Whether the bailout should have happened in the first place is completley outside the scope of the discussion regarding the bonuses and who has culpability for allowing them to occur.
This is not rocket science.
Without that language in the ammendment this would not be an issue so how exactly is that a smokescreen and how is Paulson responsible for this bonus debacle?
It’s a smokescreen because the public is up in arms about a few hundred million in bonuses while ignoring the $13 billion Paulson handed to Goldmans and $12 billion to Bank of America, through AIG. He was propping up his old buddies and saying it was to save AIG when it really was to save GS, BofA and a few other banks.
Paulson is responsible because he started the bailouts to save his investment bankers. I don’t care about the bonuses, they were legitimate contracts and the government shouldn’t interfere. They are only involved in AIG up to their necks because of Paulson.
Without that language in the ammendment this would not be an issue so how exactly is that a smokescreen and how is Paulson responsible for this bonus debacle?
It’s a smokescreen because the public is up in arms about a few hundred million in bonuses while ignoring the $13 billion Paulson handed to Goldmans and $12 billion to Bank of America, through AIG. He was propping up his old buddies and saying it was to save AIG when it really was to save GS, BofA and a few other banks.
Paulson is responsible because he started the bailouts to save his investment bankers. I don’t care about the bonuses, they were legitimate contracts and the government shouldn’t interfere. They are only involved in AIG up to their necks because of Paulson.
Look you won’t find disagreement from me on the bailout. I thought it was a bunch of bullshit from the start. But by your logic one would conclude that Obama et al are protecting Paulson via this distraction related to bonuses. That doesn’t make much sense to me. The bottom line is that AIG held untold amounts in notional value related to CDS instruments. The counterparties most exposed were the European banks. They were taken over on the grounds that the comany posed a systematic risk to the system. As for the bailout of the I-banks generally, I agree it was BS. The scare tactics and the way Paulson jammed this down our throats was disgusting to watch.
Matt and others are arguing that the bailout was necessary to avoid a total meltdown–I don’t agree and apparently you don’t either.
What are we into now, for AIG? 200 billion? Unbelievable. Why none of the people over there responsible for this haven’t committed seppuku out of shame is beyond me.
T.
What are we into now, for AIG? 200 billion? Unbelievable. Why none of the people over there responsible for this haven’t committed seppuku out of shame is beyond me.
T.
It’s the most egregious usurpation of taxpayer wealth this country has ever seen.