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`My pockets are very ticklish. When money is slyly shaken from them, I tend to giggle. When I am put against a wall and my money is forced from me, I might start to laugh, but I tend not to.
Especially when what I presumed to be a bailout was spit back in my face after having been chewed thoroughly over by corporate America.
I’m just not that ticklish.
$165 million later, I’ve been tickled a little too much. It’s fun at first. The first tickles you may smile about. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they took our money and just did what they wanted with it anyway?” Ha…ha…ha.
And President Obama is heard late last year reprimanding any actions of the sort. We giggle a little after this one. “Wouldn’t it be funny if, after this man becomes president, they just take the money and do with it what they will?” Ha…ha.
“I cannot imagine a position more selfish and greedy at a time of national crisis, and I want to send them a message right now: Do not make that mistake,” Mr. Obama was quoted saying in September 2008. “You are stewards, not only of your companies but your workers and your communities.”
A.I.G.: “Whatever…”
I suppose it causes one to laugh (mainly to mask your fear), partly as a defense mechanism—like finding yourself smiling when someone threatens your life.
After a while, all these articles about “a recession coming” and “consumer spending is down” start making sense to you (as they always seem to do), and you relax your legs.
You allow the government to take what could have been a weekend dinner and movie, an extra few gallons, a car repair, mortgage payment, or your children’s favorite cereal—but you don’t feel like it’s been a fair deal.
What are you going to do? They had to get the money, right? “Too big to fail” were the words, right?
No, no. This is all wrong.
After all, it’s your money they’ve taken. You pay your taxes, and you’ve essentially been told that you not only cannot have your money back, but you have to keep paying to not get it back.
“Pay for what?!” you scream.
The pressed white shirts and Italian shoes of corporate America, you hear soflty replied.
And then someone softly taps your shoulder, as if its a kind soul,trying not to jolt you, and claims that the hundreds of millions of dollars of increases in executive pay were “contractual.”You wet your pants in laughter.
It is said that there have been demands for a full public accounting of how the banks have been using bailout money since last fall, and those demands continue unanswered even after the taxpayer assistance has now grown to something close to $200 billion.
With the government literally owning 80 percent of the company (that is, we own A.I.G.), I think there has to be something more than just requests or even reprimands.
Obama has recently given Timothy Geithner approval to “use…leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”
New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo demanded on Monday that the insurer release the names of the executives in A.I.G.’s Financial Products subsidiary who are to receive the bonuses, their job descriptions and details about their performance.
In a letter to Edward M. Liddy, the company’s current chief executive, Mr. Cuomo said that if he did not receive the information he would issue subpoenas demanding compliance.
How about issuing warrants?