Tuesday, March 17, 2009

AIG and Team Obama have more than one problem

Yes, I think it is appalling that AIG paid out $165 million is bonuses to the people that have put the United States taxpayer in the position of bailing them out.

But even more appalling...

The majority of money divvied up by AIG and paid out, has not even gone to American banks. In fact, we not only are paying out tax dollars to bail out American banks, but we are bailing out France and Germany...

I added up the various lists provided by AIG by country (see below), and the results were quite revealing. About $44 billion went to counterparties headquartered in the U.S., such as Goldman Sachs and states such as California and Virginia.

But as I expected, the majority of the funds—$58 billion—went to banks headquartered outside the U.S. The big winners were French and German
banks, which pulled in $19 billion and $17 billion respectively.

To put these numbers in perspective, remember that the U.S. fiscal stimulus bill passed in February provided only $27.5 billion for highway and bridge construction.



Where is President Obama? Where is the outrage?

The american taxpayer is footing billions of dollars for foreign banks. Somehow I get the distinct impression that the "outrage" over $168 million is actually a distraction to a real outrage.

I

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