After the bailout, AIG executives spend $440,000 on a retreat

From the Article (***rage***)

I do agree there is some profligate spending there, but the concept of bringing all the major employees together ... to ensure that the $85 billion could be as greatly as possible paid back would have been not a crazy corporate decision

C.P.'s comment:

While I can see the advantages of having a meeting like this, I'm sure it could have been done with a larger eye on what was necessary, and not what was "wanted"......

Exactly - what's wrong with setting up at the local Holiday Inn or something?  I hear they have banquet facilities.  Better yet, there's this new fangled thing called the Internet - you can have web enabled meetings and everything.

These guys exemplify why we are where we are - they should be skinned.

gotomeeting.com

 i want my 1/2 mill back

You would think they would be a little more aware of how visible they are in the public eye right now.

The same people that complain about hand outs to the working poor

Never mind a handout to the poor, they don't even want to give rank and file workers raises that keep up with inflation

Gulliver Swift,

That's right.  The reasoning: "those layabouts should feel lucky they have work at all".  I find it interesting that a caricature of selfishness and greed, Monty Burns from "the Simpson's", should become reality.

As others have noted... 'the Wealthy are different from you or me' ...

If they have that much money to blow at a spa, then it'd just be nickels and dimes to help out the poor sods like me who have college debt up to our eyeballs.  But no, they need their $700 billion, heaven forbid they lose a day or two at the Spa.

and all my and I wanted, was 34, 000 stinky dollars to halt our home from collasping by foundation problems, by no the banks won't give us the credit, based no not our credit, but the mess these folks created, and these evil doers get away with (white collar crime) and we wonder what's wrong with the world today

My entire law school debt, mortgage and children's education could be paid for the amount the government spends every 10 seconds!  Ponder that one. But try to get a student loan forgiven, or a break on your credit card rate. HA!

Aye.  I recently had to move because my apartment's rates went up.  After almost six months, I'm *still* trying to stay on my feet after that.  Bailout for mainstreet...HA.  These guys go out on their half-million dollar spa trips, while I live off of pancakes for a week and a half until my next payday (and 80% of my paycheck goes to bills and debt).

a chain gang in arizona with that sheriff..

thats where they should go...

they definately should be in jail...

Id call it robbing the treasury..they were passed a check for ...700 billion dollars,

and a few days later...spending it on a "vacation"?

hey....where is the accountability, or shouldnt the government be watching what they are doing with the taxpayers money?

unbelievable............

I can't remember the last time I went on a vacation!

In some ways the tax stature supports bigger corporations, who have a competitive advantage already, to pay less percent on taxes as well. Bigger companies are becoming more of a burden to the future of the U.S. as they consistantly take a big position in a market, rape it, leaving us with less of nothing when they fail. We have to allow some smaller business to truly build bigger through fair taxing or else the effect is near a complete loss in some markets. I for one am tired of Sam Zell who buys companies while paying no tax on them because of loopholes and flaunting that he does so. The IRS would come after me in a heartbeat if they suspected I found a loophole, barring payment on any taxes within the middle class I am sure. They worry about us paying our taxes, WTF!

I cant say I completely agree with either the Democrat or Republicans, they both have their faults. 

Etrues05,

I agree.  I'm a registered Republican and can be very, very conservative on some issues...But I'm and individual first, and capable of thinking for myself, rather than just regurgitating what the media or a campaign feeds me.

The whole bailout sickens me.  My party has turned socialist.  If a supermarket chain or Pizza Hut were mismanaged, we wouldn't be bailing them out.  We'd let capitalism take it's course...let them go belly up and let someone new, fresh and financially stable come in and take their place.  That's the way it should be.  Why not let Lehmann and AIG die a natural death?  Citi, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are all strong right now.  Let them come in, take the place of the corrupt companies and prove their worth and honesty to the American public?

But that doesn't mean I agree with the Democrats now.  Not by a long shot.  There are some basic ways of thinking in the Democrat party that I just don't think I could ever believe in.  I'm thoroughly disillusioned with both candidates and am sad that this is the best the country has to offer.

I seriously may not even vote for the first time since I was 18.  What good is voting for the lesser of two evils?  I can't..in all honesty...say I 'support' either one of these guys.

They both couldn't care less about you or me.  They are beholden to their various special interest groups.  And that's not going to change unless there is some kind of mass revolt from the rest of us.  Not just talk...but action.

Yes, we should take action... vote for a 3rd party candidate!! It doesn't have to be a choice between one evil or the other.  Even if the the 3rd party didn't win, if they got a significant percentage of the vote, the 2 major parties and the media would have to wake up and take notice. 

Make it known that you aren't satisfied with either major party!

bdreamer, as if it wasnt bad enough that they ran the world's largest insurance company into the ground; as if it werent bad enough that their golden parachutes will remain untouched; as if it werent enough that our children's futures will have to be sacrificed to finance our way out of this meltdown--they then have the nerve to flaunt their indiscretions.  Skin them alive, to make an example of them and demostrate our intolerance of this kind of abuse.  Remember there are still more big bailouts looming in the not to distant future.  We've got to set the rules down hard and fast with regard to what the bailout money can be used for.

estela, i totally agree.  the hubris of it all.  let's hope those execs and politicians involved incur severe punishment and severe financial suffering to the point that the rest of us normal people don't have to pay for their arrogance.

I've been saying for a long time, someone should be following the money. ALL these TRILLIONS leaving the markets around the world are going somewhere. And it ain't mom and pop pulling from their 401k's.  401k= wall streets welfare NOBODY ever talks about were these Gazillions of dollars are ending up!

BUSHES New solution to energy crisis burn money!

Anita, there are remedies both in law and in equity, but it depends on what exactly they violated.  If, by any chance there were actual contigents attached to the issuance of the $80 biillion, and this conduct is violative of those "conditions subsequent" as they're called in contract law, they can he held for breach of contract, violation of fiduciary duties and/or misappropriation of corporate funds. Any contract lawyer worth a grain of salt would have foreseen the possibility of abuse of this bailout, and would have written in some conditions; but this was hastily put together by legislators and Paulson, whose not a lawyer at all, so I dont know what if any conditions were built in.  In the proper circumstance (which I doubt would apply in this instance) their conduct could rise to the level of criminality, and then it would be a straight up criminal prosecution.
Failing remedies in law, there is Plan B: equitable remedies, one such being recission, i.e. undo the contract/agreement (I dont think this option is available to acts of congress, except by further amendment that cancels the Act); another would be an injunction, prohibiting their conduct and/or forcing them to certain conduct.  A last equitable remediy would be restitution: make them pay it back.
All of these would require an advocate representing the rights of the people.  The Attorney General's Office could handle it; or a public interest advocacy group.  Sadly, unless the outcry is sufficient, I doubt we will see anyone pick up the banner of this cause.

Bud, bear in mind that many of the trillions that have been lost never existed! It was all done with smoke and mirrors: over-valuation of assets and mark-to-market pricing.  All "creative" bookkeeping techniques.  Its like a house that you buy for $100k, and suddenly its market price is $150K.  Nothing has changed--the house still only has one bathroom and four bedrooms, but suddenly you have an equity appreciation of $50K.  That $50K is a legal fiction. When the housing crisis settles the house willbe worth $100K again.  The problem arises where an owner borrowred against that legal fiction  and now cant sell the house for what he owes on it.

Remember Enron--they were doubling and tripling the value of assets to keep the quarterly statements looking sharp and prosperous.  In the end there were no assets, or the assets were so over valued that they did not accurately reflect the true worth of the company. Once that cat was out of the bag, the stock price tumbled and every investor and everybody who had it in their 401K lost every cent.

The AIG collapse stems from their heavy investment in those default wagers (I forget their technical name), where the insurer bet on whether or not the borrowers were going to default on loans.  AIG gambled that the risk of loss was small, and they would pocket the premiums they collected, so when all those borrowers defaulted, they had to pay up.  It caused a mighty cash-crush; that, combined with the downward trend of the investments that the company was holding caused a "serious liquidty problem" for AIG, hence the bailout.

If someone can ever start catching up to all these corporate crooks I think they are going to need a whole new aagency and whole new court to prosecute them.

now introducing

Dept. of Homeland grabmymoneyback  based in the Caribbean and The Supreme Egomaniacs Dictators court. Based in Crawford, Texas.

My father in law has lost $8,000 in the last two days because of this corruption. Makes me want to move ot of the country

I'm in a line of work where I have to run cost of living reports alot. 

 Get this...the cost of living in Aruba is only 3% higher than the cost of living in Louisville, KY.  (Naturally...that wouldn't be on the ocean.  But heck...it's a little island)Owned by the Dutch, who have a SURPLUS rather than a deficit too.

Estella Thanks for some great Info. I'm sure not the shiniest apple in the bunch, when it comes to all this financial stuff, I'm more of the apples to apples comparison type guy. example someone buys stock at one price pays dollars from his bank account. supply and demand makes the price of this stock rise. Ceo cashes out stocks given to him as bonus, puts lots of money in T bills or where ever they stash there cash( sure would like to know where). there is now more stock available ,price drops. Government spends trillions on wars, needs more money, wants to sell more t bills, nobody wants them so they increase the interest to attract buyers,CEO's buy more, this resets all interest rates. Home owners adjustable rate mortgage goes up, homeowner loses home, as well as his neighbor losing his too. Home prices drop, too many in market.  In the market there were winners and losers. Are you telling me the market is dropping but no one is selling off shares for dollars to account for this plunge. The market is just self imploding inside inself to suck our dollars into some vortex of space?---- ahhh  ha   it's Alice in wonderland  that's responsible! ---------------  Now the middle man banks want us to give them real money for?   How well off are the Ceo's and insiders right now? I'll bet cha every darn mattress is padded very nicely my friends.

News flash Ceo sends puppets on holiday courteous of john q. public.

estela 2008

Be careful for you might end up being the sole person responsible for are whole economy collapsing, By explaining why all the electronic paper stocks, and currency being printed is nothing but smoke ,with nothing to back it up. People figure his out that there is nothing of any value so we implode! all the way back to 1932! 

Hey now..

A little deregulation never hurt anyone (in the know) it hurt everyone (else)!  Thankfully we are a nation of TV addicts - we can sit down, watch the game, take our minds of our problems for awhile....that's right...just relax..ahhhhh

In jail for petty theft

Correction:  He's in Gitmo, since he was labelled a left-wing socialist terrorist.