“In the wake of the mind blowing $165 million in performance bonuses handed out to AIG employees, U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner faces increased criticism for his role in fostering such rapacious and outrageous actions. Secretary Geithner, along with President Obama and President Bush, have been responsible for transferring something to the tune of $170 billion in federal bailout money to AIG to keep the struggling giant afloat and stabilize the economy, or so they thought.”
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In the wake of the mind blowing $165 million in performance bonuses handed out to AIG employees, U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner faces increased criticism for his role in fostering such rapacious and outrageous actions.

Secretary Geithner, along with President Obama and President Bush, have been responsible for transferring something to the tune of $170 billion in federal bailout money to AIG to keep the struggling giant afloat and stabilize the economy, or so they thought.

However, what we have experienced since the historic bailout has proven to be a bit bleaker, with an occasional slap in the face by some demagogue politicians and greedy corporate executives.

Geithner needs to get out, period. But President Obama continues to support his personal selection for Secretary of Treasury despite his inadequate performance saying He’s making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand. We need to give him support.

Playing a bad hand, eh? If Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel didn’t win any games next year, would the fans say he did his best with a bad hand? Probably not.

I think a more likely response by the fans would be to petition the athletic director and president of the university to get him the hell out of there and put someone new in that can win games. Well, Secretary Geithner is like the coach of our economy, and right now he’s not winning any games.

This economic debacle that has befallen us needs a more comprehensive solution than just throwing money at it like we have been doing.

Fun fact; if you spent $1 million every day since Galileo was born in 1564 you could almost spend all of the $170 billion that AIG has been given, with about $8 billion left to buy an island in Hawaii to retire on.

Rather than giving AIG all that money, we should have let them go into bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is not the end of a company. Bankruptcy courts could have created more strict guidelines and ethics to be observed by employees, along with the ability to modify financial obligations such as performance bonuses.

Instead, AIG received billions of taxpayer dollars and has found some loopholes in the contracts that allow it to continue to operate inefficiently, rewarding employees for running the company into the ground.

AIG has attempted to defend its performance bonus actions saying that the bonuses were promised before the company had received federal bailout money. This is true.

Democratic Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd has admitted that he was pressured by Treasury officials to add language to the bill that exempted all bonuses promised before Feb. 11, 2009. Yeah that’s really intelligent Senator Dodd, allow for the rewarding of unproductive workers that have been part of one of the biggest factors of our nation’s recession. Senator Dodd not only allowed it, but shows his spinelessness in pointing fingers at the Treasury Department and Secretary Geithner for pressuring him to exclude any clause prohibiting bonuses.

If Senator Dodd didn’t want performance bonuses to be included, he had the power to change it.

Rather, he apparently allowed himself to be swayed by Geithner and his staff to allow for bonuses to be handed out at the taxpayer’s expense.

Something more sinister and dirty seems to be surrounding this situation here, and Geithner’s hands have mud all over them, again. Does the $38,000 worth in taxes he cheated on come to mind?

Bottom line, get this guy of here. This country deserves someone with a less tainted reputation, someone that won’t stand by idle while taxpayer money is given out as bonuses to failing employees, and someone with the courage to lead us out of this terrible mess.

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