Subject: American International Group Inc.

• Daily Flog: Wall Street's broken brokers go for broke; McCain's lie is buried by meltdown news

  September 15, 2008

• Daily Flog: Deep inside AIG -- the profits of doom

  September 17, 2008

• Mayor On MTP: Taxes to Preserve Our "Future"

  September 21, 2008

• Bush Bailout? Rightbloggers Say OK -- Fight Hackers, Sandra Bernhard Instead!

  September 22, 2008

• Daily Flog: In NYC, the end of the houses that Ruth and ruthlessness built

  September 22, 2008

• Daily Flog: Celebrity roast of Lehman on Capitol Hill

  October 6, 2008

• Daily Flog: Desperate McCain embraces socialism

  October 8, 2008

• Cuomo sees light, follows profit

  October 15, 2008

• Financial Industry Rushes to Screw Us More Before Obama Gets In

  November 10, 2008

• Wayne Barrett: Ed Towns, Watchdog? Has Congress Forgotten Ed's Past?

  December 9, 2008

• Real motherfuckers: AIG still hands out bonuses

  December 10, 2008

• Clinton Donations Report Spreads Badly Needed Cynicism

  December 19, 2008

• Brett Favre just the last bailout to fail New York City. Next star in East? Caroline Kennedy.

  Well, just another bailout that didn't work. Brett Favre was supposed to save the New York Jets, which would have made the city's sports fans happy, though not as happy as those Wall Streeters in their stadium skyboxes. But in the middle of a boom — the Jets were 8-3 and seemed a cinch for the NFL playoffs — Favre imploded and the team collapsed. Hubris pays off. And then it doesn't. Take it from me, America, you know you're headed for a major depression when even the usual distra

  December 29, 2008

• Crash of '08 Memorabilia Now Bolstering Economy

  The recently fashionable practice of hawking disgraced ponzi-meister Bernie Madoff items on eBay has spread to most of the other firms which have tanked in recent months.Why people would want items commemorating vast, endemic fraud and even worse bumbling is beyond us. But, we did a search, and, hey, for $40 bucks, you can get a Lehman Brothers stock certificate, and for $21.45, you can snatch up a "sharp-looking" Lehman wall clock, and for a mere $10, you can have a Lehman baseball cap embroide

  January 5, 2009

• Nissan crashes; hedge funds lick chops; incoming Israel govt. may take 'harder line'

  Harkavy Plans are moving apace to purposely set up a "toxic bank" full of poisonous assets to further bail out those banks that had greedily and recklessly accumulated them. Call it Shitibank. And give it the naming rights to the new baseball stadium for the New York Mets, taking the moniker away from toxic Citibank. No joke. As Ground Zero reminds us of 9/11, ShitiField would serve as a monument to the global financial meltdown caused by New Yorkers. ShitiField would remind us to burst any

  February 9, 2009

• The economy needs steroids, but Alex Rodriguez confesses he took 'em

  The Congo War: a report by Al Jazeera from this past November. The deadliest war since World War II — the slaughter in the Congo — drags on and on amid relatively little notice. Arabs and Jews are still killing each other, and Israel's about to elect an even harder-line government. The Taliban are seizing more and more of Afghanistan, where bloody battles with U.S. troops this spring promise to kill Americans at a shocking rate. (And Americans are still being blown up in Iraq.)

  February 10, 2009

• Geithner Unveils Plan, Stocks Plummet

  This morning Treasury Secretary Geithner unveiled the new $2 trillion bank bailout plan, which as previously reported counts on private investors to buy up some "bad assets" of troubled banks in order to unclog their pipes and get them lending again. The New York Times helpfully puts a graph on its front page to show how the stock market has fallen since "almost as soon as Mr. Geithner began speaking." Paul Krugman hopes the plan's "a Trojan horse that smuggles the right policy into place." "L

  February 10, 2009

• AIG Bonuses, "Counterparty" Payments Pissing Everyone Off (Updated)

  Barack Obama has been hassling AIG since before he was President, but has been going along with their standing bailout plan. Now that it's revealed AIG is paying out another $165 million in bonuses, Obama is joining Andrew Cuomo*, Barney Frank, Russ Feingold and others in clamoring to get the money back. This is peanuts, though compared to the recently-exposed $120 billion-with-a-b AIG's been paying out to "counterparties" such as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. At TPM former Labor Secretary R

  March 16, 2009

• Everyone Mad at AIG, Some Murderously So

  With Bernie Madoff safely locked away, the nation is turning its righteous indignation toward AIG, which has been taking our tax dollars and giving them to other failed businesses and its own failed executives. Charles Grassley of the senate finance committee suggested those excecutives kill themselves, but others seem inclined to do the job themselves. "Violence is deplorable," admits Not So Subtle, "but today I'm willing to make an exception, because I have 165 million reasons to call for a

  March 17, 2009

• Judge Slaps BOA/Merrill, Clears Way for Cuomo Investigation

  While everyone was freaking out over AIG bonuses, Andrew Cuomo won a victory in his attempt to get justice on the $4 billion in Merrill Lynch bonuses that were outraging us back in January. A judge has ruled that Cuomo may disclose the names of the Merrill bonus execs whom he has subpoenaed in the case. Bank of America, which took over Merrill Lynch after its collapse, had hoped to convince the judge that the names of its bonus recipients was a trade secret -- such as, they had told the court, t

  March 18, 2009

• AIG Blame Gets Passed Around

  Everyone remains angry at AIG, but as the first rage-wave subsides, some parties are looking to affix blame on persons rather than initials. Some notice that Chris Dodd did not end the bonuses in the terms of the bailout legislation. But as that directive came from Treasury, blame also falls on Secretary Tim Geithner. Senator Charles Grassley wants Treasury investigated. The Times' DealBook sees the fault in the original bailout provisions engineered last year, which causes Talking Points Memo

  March 19, 2009

• House Votes 90 Percent Tax on AIG, Other Bonuses

  The House just passed a bill to "levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money," says AP. (Reason's David Weigel calls it the "Fuck you, AIG" bill.) We'll see whether this hastily-cobbled bill gets anywhere in the Senate -- Harry Reid wants the matter resolved quickly, but someone over there must be thinking about the constitutionality of such a law, as Fox News and Slate have,

  March 19, 2009

• Bloomberg: Releasing Bonus Names is 'Snooping'

  March 19, 2009

• Cuomo Gets AIG Bonus Names, Will Get Merrill Lynch's, Too

  Nobody fucks with steamroller Cuomo! Not only has AIG given up the names of its controversial bonus recipients, for which Cuomo subpoenaed them -- Bank of America has just agreed to give Cuomo the names of the Merrill-Lynch bonus-takers who absconded with $4 billion just before bailout basket case BoA took Merrill over. This is presumably the next step in Cuomo's drive to get the $4 billion back. That's some hot streak. Next maybe he should fly over to Pakistan and beat up Bin Laden.

  March 19, 2009

• Cheek, In Review: 7 Days of Runnin' Scared

  And how was your week? Our week began with a Top Model riot and ended with a days-long pitchfork uprising over A to the I to the G, ad nauseum. But we had some fun in between. Surely the highlight of the week was our Bill O'Reilly audio porn, which drew the attention of many hardcore aficionados. And we enjoyed a sneak preview of the Caroline Kennedy comic book. We didn't think Bernie Madoff would get released and, sure enough, he didn't. Another white-collar crook got new charges. Natasha

  March 20, 2009

• AIG, Bad Banks, Wall Street: The Story So Far

  Andrew Cuomo announces that a portion of the contentious AIG bonuses, which he used the full force and majesty of his office to investigate, are being returned. Face is saved, anger abated, plans for summer homes in Biarritz scrapped. This gives cover for the Senate to postpone its vote on the punitive bonus taxes passed by the House. Also cheering Wall Street is the latest Geithner plan for bad assets, which received the qualified support of many financial overlords and led to a market rally. A

  March 24, 2009

• Geithner, Bernanke Inform Congress of Fascist Takeover Plan

  As expected, Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed head Bernanke are on the Hill telling Congress they need the power to take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG to prevent our recent disasters from happening again. At today's hearings Republicans, not yet having talking points from Rush Limbaugh, by and large went easy (though Ron Paul did his customary number about the evils of regulation). Rightbloggers knew what to say, though. "Obama's Creeping Fascism: Power To Seize Private Firms,

  March 24, 2009

• AIG Guy Quits, Rightbloggers Weep at Injustice

  A resignation letter from an AIG executive, Jake DeSantis, to boss Ed Liddy, long and full of hurt feelings ("you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday... you didn't defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut") appears in the Times. As you might imagine, rightbloggers cry him a river. "Are we better off because a skilled trader has left," says Megan

  March 25, 2009

• Cuomo Subpoenas AIG Again -- This Time Going After the Big Cheese?

  Why won't people leave AIG alone? This one poor AIG guy had to work all year for a lousy $742,000. And still we persecute them! Andrew Cuomo, who previously subpoenaed AIG for their bonus babies' names, is now subpoenaing them about their Financial Products division's credit default swaps -- which we assume, hope, pray means he's looking into that whole scam in which master criminal Joseph Cassano and AIGFP defrauded the company down the drain and Cassano walked away with millions. We don't alw

  March 26, 2009

• The Backstory of the Financial Collapse

  Call it Gall Street. How else to describe an industry that applauds nearly $500 million in bonuses for executives taking an entire economy down with them?

  September 23, 2008

• Six Signs of a Sick Economy

  Read this and then start hunting for some recession-proof bargains

  October 1, 2008

• Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie

  How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis

  August 5, 2008

• What Cooked the World's Economy?

  It wasn't your overdue mortgage.

  January 28, 2009

• How Rightbloggers Made "Fascist" the New "Socialist"

  Rightbloggers talked a lot over the past eight years about Bush Derangement Syndrome, liberal sufferers of which thought Bush engaged in a totalitarian overthrow of our liberties. One of the symptoms was calling the President a fascist. "A strong word to fling about," warned The Anchoress, who noted that none of Bush's opponents had been thrown in jail for criticizing him: "None of those dissenting viewpoints or insults resulted in arrest, imprisonment, silencing, firing... You keep using that

  April 6, 2009

• Gucci Mane Has Ice To Spare

  Fuck mortgage-backed securities, default credit swaps, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, Citigroup, Chrysler, Washington Mutual, Bernie Madoff, Sir Allen Stanford, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, suicide loans, TARP, GM, Wells Fargo, Jerome Kerviel, al-Qaeda, Iran, Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, AIPAC, Metro Dream Homes, Ken Lewis, Bank of America, Jay Bybee, John Thain, Lehman Brothers, Joe Cassano, Merrill Lynch, and swine flu. Polar bears ruined our economy.

  May 1, 2009

• Obama Asks Congress for Power to Regulate Derivatives

  We're pleased to see the Obama Administration has asked for new powers to regulate the trading of derivatives -- those "financial instruments" by means of which, in the good old days, big banks shuttled bundles of debt back and forth, creating the illusion of economic health until it all went to shit and the U.S. economy collapsed under their weight. Treasury wants Congress to allow it to track and review these transactions so it can tell when they're going to blow America's gasket again and s

  May 13, 2009

• Barrett: All Bloomie's Rich Friends

  Mayor Mogul stepped on his own tongue yesterday while explaining away the Grand Poobah confab he attended with buddies Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ted Turner, the Rockefellers and Oprah, revealed in the Times today. "All my friends are philanthropic, or they probably wouldn't be my friends," he said, The Super Rich Come to NYC), by way of explaining his attendance at what the Times headline called "A Quiet Meeting of America's Richest." The agenda for the Rockefeller Institute session was to tal

  May 21, 2009

• Bloomberg Keeps His Billions Separate From His Mayoral Obligations? Yeah, Right!

  September 1, 2009

• We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?

  October 27, 2009