45 Comments

1. Pajamas Media » Million Dollar Bonu$e$ at Fannie Mae:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Mar 19, 2009 - 11:16 am 2. The Historian:

BIG FAT FAILED FANNIE
This is just plain wrong!

http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-fat-failed-fannie.html

Mar 19, 2009 - 11:35 am 3. goy:

We need… a Carnival of the Bonuses!!

Mar 19, 2009 - 11:39 am 4. Joe:

how about if franklin raines gives back that $$ he earned. also, mike pence is trying to get all congressmen who got AIG bribes/contributions in the past year to have to return it. pls. make the case that it should be for the last 5 years and not just for AIG, but for Freddie, Fannie and any other firm that got any bailout $$.

Turn the Congressmen on themselves for some real entertainment. It would be funny if it wasn’t so scary.

Mar 19, 2009 - 11:40 am 5. Kathy:

Claudia Rosett article at Pajamas Media

Mar 19, 2009 - 11:53 am 6. PAR:

I can not believe that Congress is now trying to tax all the money back from the guys at AIG. It is bad enough they screw up so bad in the first place and the employees get all that money. But they then ignore the bonuses paid to Freddie and Fannie execs. And to top it off they now want to tax all the money back. This is clearly unconstitutional and if challenged in court will cost the tax payers more. All they are proving is that they are the big bully on the block. Obama said all spending is stimulus so I guess this is just more stimulus. At least these guys did something to earn the money, unlike the moochers getting free handouts.

Mar 19, 2009 - 12:14 pm 7. goy:

- I can not believe that Congress is now trying to tax all the money back from the guys at AIG.

Yes, especially when one reads this.

Plus, the slimeballs tried to ‘fast-track’ the tax. They failed.

Worst. Fracking. Congress. EVER.

Mar 19, 2009 - 12:29 pm 8. J. Rockford:

If Congress can create a law to just take the bonus money from the AIG people, then they can create a law to take everything that Franklin Raines owns. And Chris Dodd. And Barney Frank. And all the other crooks that have hurt so many people.

Mar 19, 2009 - 12:42 pm 9. goy:

Correction: they didn’t fail. Information that numerous members had changed their vote was incorrect.

If they can do this to AIG, they can do it to anyone. They’ve as much as said so already.

By comparison, George III had about 1/8th the chutzpah.

Mar 19, 2009 - 12:42 pm 10. Wellspring:

That Congress is trying to get in front of the angry mob isn’t news. George C. Scott told us long ago: “when they go to run you out of town, start marching and make it a parade.”

What stuns me is the mainstream media, which has from the beginning worked to conceal the story of what really happened and why, to cover for the people who egged it on and profitted from it, and to encourage a view that it was deregulation that lead to this. They’ve moved from delivering a slanted version of events to outright fabrication.

Mar 19, 2009 - 12:44 pm 11. Fat Man:

The feigned outrage over “bonuses” to AIG employees is like a three card monte game. The real purpose is distract the spectators while the card players confederates pick their pockets. AIG was a conduit for over $170 billion to its counter-parties like Goldman Sachs. The “bonuses” were 1/10th of 1% of that amount, and what is worse, 1/100th of 1% of the $1.5 trillion that Congress has appropriated since Jan 20. The spectators are the taxpayers. The three card monte players are the politicians.

If you don’t know who the mark is, you are the mark

Mar 19, 2009 - 12:58 pm 12. Barbara:

Brilliant column, Miss Rossett. Raised my blood pressure, of course, but since the news of the day keeps it constantly near its acme, that doesn’t matter too much. Events in Washington no longer look merely stupid and recklessly profligate, they are now nearing insanity.

Mar 19, 2009 - 1:12 pm 13. Paddy:

One negative aspect of the current government regulation of compensation that none of the Dems in Congress and the Obama administration fail to recognize is that they give real meaning to the old adage: “When you pay peanuts you can only hire monkeys.”

Those at AIG and other TARP recipients who know how to manage and market may quit. Then the taxpayers rescue money will be squandered as these companies fail. No doubt, the idiots are in charge.

Mar 19, 2009 - 1:21 pm 14. Dotar Sojat:

………and meanwhile, the Dodd/Frank/Raines recession marches on.

Mar 19, 2009 - 1:31 pm 15. TheOldMan:

“Barney Frank” and “Fannie” in the same sentence creates unfortunate visuals.

Mar 19, 2009 - 1:49 pm 16. phd:

I am becoming what can only described as BLINDINGLY OUTRAGED. Sorry about that, but I don’t know how else to type a scream. I’m seriously beginning to think that we need a military coup, and to start this democracy thing all over.

Mar 19, 2009 - 2:05 pm 17. Delia:

15. TheOldMan:

“Barney Frank” and “Fannie” in the same sentence creates unfortunate visuals
~

LOL! TheOldMan, are you making fun of the “Banking Kween”?

16. phd,

I hear ya!
~

The picture of the guy smiling and holding a bag of money just cracks me up.

Mar 19, 2009 - 2:24 pm 18. Belmont Club » The raincoat of Franklin Raines:

[...] Claudia Rosett tells a fascinating anecdote. While at the WSJ she and her colleagues had a discussion with Franklin Raines. At its conclusion, they walked Raines to the door. What sticks with me in particular, though, is the final scene of that long-ago lunch. The conversation got heated enough so that we continued arguing after Raines rose from the table to go. He was touting his achievements at Fannie Mae; we were fretting that his promises were too good to be true. Susan and I walked out of the conference room together, and watched Raines walk down the hall to the closet where he’d left his coat. We watched him fish out of that closet one of the most gorgeously well-tailored raincoats I’d ever seen. He put on that ultimate designer-job of a raincoat and walked out the door, and as he went, I asked Susan, “How much do you think that raincoat cost.” The gist of her reply (I do not remember her exact words) was: Plenty, and we’re going to pay for it. [...]

Mar 19, 2009 - 2:28 pm 19. Joe schmoe:

kudos to the fat man! The only reason congress is acting in this manner is they know the taxpayer is ^%$^##&# off. Since congress thinks that setting pay levels is ok, I think that they should vote themselves a 50% paycut. While they’re at it they can drive themselves to work, I believe they all get an $800 car allowance. That shows the real meaning of shared sacrifice>

Mar 19, 2009 - 2:38 pm 20. Leatherneck:

Barney Frank, and other Demorats got in the way of correcting the housing problem. That is an example of what a reprobate mind does for a country.

Mar 19, 2009 - 2:41 pm 21. Jbl:

Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick profited hugely off of Fannie and Freddie – millions and tens of millions in bonuses.

They should give it back. Mismanaging thieves.

Mar 19, 2009 - 2:55 pm 22. NK:

Why isnt Franklin Raines in federal prison?; why isn’t Jamie Gorelnick in federal prison?

Mar 19, 2009 - 3:15 pm 23. JZ:

Raines was an Obama campaign advisor (on housing and the economy), so this “bonus” was probably predetermined long before the election. It’s like the Great Circle (Jerk – pardon my French) of Life, isn’t it?

(Yes, I realize that Obama denied Raines advised him. But then the president has pretty much denied that he had anything to do with the AIG bonuses when the bonuses were guaranteed in the Stimulus bill that he signed without reading through first.)

Mar 19, 2009 - 3:21 pm 24. Leatherneck:

The James/Younger gang were samll time compaired to these thieves.

Mar 19, 2009 - 3:34 pm 25. Will:

Better to start with our Legislature,where corruption runs rampant.We’ed be better off to pay them to stay home.

Mar 19, 2009 - 4:28 pm 26. e:

This is going to have to be live and learn. Don’t give bailout money without getting some control on additional compensation.

This retroactive stuff that Congress is trying to pass is constitutionally dangerous and sets some really bad legal precedents. Its a f-up, mitigate what damage and what action that can be taken in existing law.

Sometimes its better to take a slap to the face and learn from it than to do something really foolish.

Mar 19, 2009 - 4:37 pm 27. StopTheLooting:

There is one name for the Franklin Raines type — looter. It applies to any who seek money that was not earned or who seek protection by regulation.

At the root of both is the initiation of force. As Claudia mentioned, it is the honest people who must pay for the looters. It is the honest people who are damaged by the regulations.

The antidote is reason, self-interest, and *capitalism*: a social system with the purpose of protecting the individual rights of its citizens including property rights.

There is a hot book out there which addresses the issue of looters and the initiation of force. Check it out here:

http://tinyurl.com/dnh8bz

Mar 19, 2009 - 4:57 pm 28. What about the bonuses awarded to Fannie and Freddie execs? « DPGI - the aftermath:

[...] via The Rosett Report » Million Dollar Bonu$e$ at Fannie Mae. [...]

Mar 19, 2009 - 5:04 pm 29. Agamemnon:

As the 0bama machine goes after the modern day kulaks, they conveniently ignore CEO Franklin Raines, whose total compensation during his tenure overseeing the failure of Fannie Mae was in the neighborhood of $250 million.

But Raines is black and a Democrat, so he skates free while those who signed contracts in good faith with their employer share the kulaks’ fate; they have their earnings expropriated by the state.

Mar 19, 2009 - 6:23 pm 30. Corporate Kleptocrats In Collusion With Democrats « Unambiguously Ambidextrous:

[...] the best story I’ve read on all this today is from Claudia Rosett: But there is a scene I remember pretty well. In the spring of 2001, when I was working as a member [...]

Mar 19, 2009 - 8:13 pm 31. Prevost1580:

Bailouts do not work-

Bailouts only reward laziness & failure. I’m a small business owner ( 9 years ) Corporate welfare is not what this country was built on. My GG grandfather owned bakeries,bars & many other businesses in a small, maybury town ( Belfast Maine ) My other G Grandparents in the deep South were also small business owners & farmers who did quite well.

Wake up! America!! and lets get back to the basics.

Mar 19, 2009 - 9:06 pm 32. gnubi:

The big problem with the MSM is that they march in lockstep with the left. Compare column inches on AIG employees with column inches on exposing the FMae board, the FMac board, Dodd, Obama, and Clinton leeches. They’re into it up to their necks. Every one of them is a crook draining us dry to their own benefit. The papers could save themselves with a new direction in investigative journalism but instead they’ll go down with their biases intact.

Mar 19, 2009 - 10:00 pm 33. W J A:

Do you think there will be the same outrage over the Fannie Mae bonuses? Oh wait a minute, Barney Fink’s boyfriend worked there didn’t he? No outrage. End of story.

Mar 19, 2009 - 10:08 pm 34. therealist:

Raines should be in jail. He presided over a trillion dollar accounting fraud and got away scott free because Congress and the OFHEO didn’t want to admit they let a guy loot the Treasury for years. The company had to spend two years and $100m+ to fix the accounting. (I spent some long nights on that project.)

However, that doesn’t mean that nobody at AIG or Fannie or Freddie deserves a bonus. There are undoubtedly a few decent people there trying to minimize losses, and that’s the folks you want to keep. If you can pay a guy an extra $800k to save you a hundred million dollars, you do it. So its not quite so clear cut.

And by the way, AIG was *stolen* from the guy who built it (Greenburg) by NYAG Elliot Spitzer and then put in the hands of a guy who couldn’t hack it. AIG is a very complex company and there’s probably only a handfulof people alive who can run it properly. None of them will work for $250k or $500k or whatever the cap is now, especially once you factor in DC or NYC taxes, so its just going to hemorrhage taxpayer money.

Mar 19, 2009 - 10:52 pm 35. LarryOldtimer:

It is clear that the members of Congress and the Obama administration want the public to be angry at the executives of AIG, and Fanny Mae. Otherwise, the public might pay attention to what the Congress and the Obama administration are doing and get angry at who is really at fault.

If a person picks my pocket, and puts half in the street so a homeless person picks it up, should I be angry with the homeless person for picking the money in the street up, or with the one who picked my pocket?

Mar 20, 2009 - 3:12 am 36. Broadsword:

After Jesus was scourged, a crown made of thorns was put on his head, a reed into his right hand and someone else’s scarlet raincoat…uh, nevermind.

Mar 20, 2009 - 4:46 am 37. Newmarket2:

HEY! What kind of bonuses are they? Are they fair compared to other bonuses? What’s wrong with a large part of compensation being based on achieving goals – instead of a salary-entitlement?
Why am I the ONLY person asking these questions?

Calm down everyone and stop a second, take an anxiolytic if you must, and use your brains here. No one will respect conservatives if we knee jerk like the liberals.

Mar 20, 2009 - 5:58 am 38. Paul -Indiana:

Is Barney Frank’s boyfriend still at Fannie May?

Mar 20, 2009 - 8:36 am 39. Paul -Indiana:

#8. Don’t forget that they can also make a law to take from us any money they want.

Mar 20, 2009 - 8:39 am 40. Historical perspective:

What bothers me most about the AIG bonus flap is that these were not really bonuses. These were severance payments made to individuals who were told that they would be losing their jobs but if they stayed to help AIG close down this business in an orderly fashion that they would receive additional compensation to offset their leaving for other jobs. Given the current state of the economy – many of these individuals may be out of work and without income for quite some time. Now the Democrats are showboating their “anger” at these same unemployed people as if somehow that are the embellishment of all the evils that have created this economic mess.

I am amazed that many of the same blogs and web columnist who for years have written about the bias and corruption of news offered by the MSM fell so easily in line when the MSM story line was that these “executive bonuses” were being paid out for failure that is costing the taxpayers trillions of dollars. You should be ashamed of yourselves for not trusting your original instincts that say – if this is a story that is being played out by the MSM – there is something wrong here.

Mar 20, 2009 - 11:14 am 41. therealist:

By the way, Geithner himself got a $434k severance package when he left the Fed in January.

Mar 20, 2009 - 11:46 am 42. Gaffe Prices:

Well, ol’ Franklin and Jamie did utter the magic words “Feddie Mae I?”

well, not officially apparently, but quietly, outside the din of paparazzi, but in a secret ceremony, dressed in vestments of the holy order, with freshly pressed irridiscent robes, with the sanctified inscense re and candles burning, all the incantations and invocations to the appropriate god(s) implored, and with, with all the proper ritual implements at hand, they were now fully ready for re-initiation back into that exclusive cadre of holy cabinet (economic) warriors and with their feudal purses fully validated, and pregnant with possibilities…

/sarcasm off This is just, just terrible. I mean, lets face it, the raincoating of Franklin Raines and virtuous Jamie Gorelick continues unmercifully apace. And ceaselessly as well.

Now you just leave Franklin Raines and what’s her name alone!!

Mar 20, 2009 - 1:09 pm 43. Gaffe Prices:

I think I got his figured out: apparently the strategy is (was) to loot the company(s) (Frannie Mac, and Feddie Mae) dry
privately, through a combination of mismanagement and bonuses, in order to provide for the irresistible ubercompulsion that set the stage for the inevitable (government) hostile takeover (of Fannie Mac & …), not to mention countless other “troubled asset” Behemoths on that cesspool and den of thieves we call Wall Street.

I continue to courageously scold Ms Rossett, for this convenient “distraction” in singling out formerly “private” CEO’s for abuse, in that “foot in the mouth”, “I wish I hadn’t said it that way” style that has already earned me the exhaustive and frequent misapprobation of Wall Street for already many weeks now, And, I might add, the porportionate level of approbrium (de)based by my efforts (there).

I mean, what’s the point of thoroughly tracing back the connections to givernment politicos when it’s the administration and congress who so humbly offer up the very and only support and ass-istance and salvation the situation undoubtedly (everyone knows this) requires? Hmmm, Ms Rossett?

what We the peep hole really need to know is whether any of the magazine subscriptions of inmates at Gitmo have been allowed to lapse, or whether or not their long distance cellphone bills are kept up, and all the other countless indignities and terror suffered by our guests there, suffered in that Chamber of Horrors quaintly called the Gantanamo Hilton, that probably “pushed them over the edge” along time ago, and interminably endure there.

Not to mention the inestimable damage done by flinging various interrogative(s) at the administrations once infinite kitty of “capital” for dealing with, and providing “solutions” to (for) this crisis! (And I suppose we should just all just move on and “expose” all the shenanigans down at appropriations committee in congress? (eh Ms Rossett? *wink* wink*)

So Wall Street is (was) a Quango. like none of us knew that already. (thanks Ms Rossett)

(Oh, no, here comes the cat, and I just know she’s gonna jump up on the keyboard, and sabotage this whole thing, like she’s some Pajamas Chaos Agent for the army of defenders out there, I just know it!)

Mar 20, 2009 - 2:33 pm 44. Alex:

If it wasnt so sad would be hilarious to watch.

There is a 10-12 year depression coming, and no force on earth can stop it. The Federal Reserve looted the American banking system just as they did in the 1920’s, in full view and plain sight of everyone. The credit bubble created and then imploded was managed by the NY FED, which pumped massive amounts of credit into American markets, knowing full well the result is a collapse of credit, commodity and real estate markets, just as in the early 1930’s.

The straw that broke the camels back was the transfer of at least 4 Trillion from USA to Europe in 2007, 2008 and early 2009. ( this is the amounts we know of, there may be much more we still have to uncover). These funds went to directly to European banking familys without explanation, cause, documentation of any type. The NY FED still refuses to disclose why these funds were sent, and what collateral was placed in return ( of course there is none).
The transfer of these Trillions hollowed out the American Banking system and left no reserves to cushion credit and real estate markets. There was nothing in the piggy bank to draw upon.

The Joke is on the American Taxpayer, so caught up in the world of political posturing regarding small issues that looting of the United States was done in broad daylight. We still quibble over 165 million in AIG Bonus funds while over 120 BILLION is funneled thru AIG to European Banks in the last 8 months.

The Irony of the banking system goes right over most peoples heads. They dont want to know or wish to understand how America is beholden to Bank of England or French Banking families for hundreds of Trillions. We dont read what occured during the great depression or what led up to it, we dont want to take the time to understand how Federal Reserve is controlled by Europe, we dont care any longer. Just give us American Idol and who authorized 165 million in bonuses…..

We deserve the Govt we end up with, because we dont want the heavy lifting any longer.

Mar 20, 2009 - 8:29 pm 45. Meryl:

Oh my.

Things are not completely clean at Fannie/Mac?

I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

And Franklin Raines got clean away with his millions with no threats of retroactive tax?

Oh, goodness. I’m sure we’ve misunderstood something, because everybody knows he was SUCH a fine, fine man.

None of this is confusing and hasn’t been for a long time. It is perfectly plain that common sense conservative people who work for a living and pay their bills and have been criticized for years for their “backwardness” and “simple thinking” were–gues what–RIIIIIIGHT!!

And this is what we (us backwards people) knew would happen if an affirmative action, stupid, arrogant, ignorant, inexperienced, America-hating, lying, conniving, thuggish, BMOC, boy was elected POTUS.

We were right.

Never forget these months, so that after they are finally over (however they end) you NEVER AGAIN CRINGE WHEN SOMEBODY TELLS YOU YOU ARE OUT OF TOUCH AND DON’T UNDERSTAND.

Let these months prepare you for those later moments because when somebody says that to you in the future we build, you will look them in the eye and say, “I’m right. You’re wrong. Get out of my way. NOW.”

Never again will we try to have a conversation with these idiots in which we are on the defensive and acting like we have to explain ourselves.

Mar 22, 2009 - 2:23 pm

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