This is americanism in microcosm.

This guy made a ton of money over the past few years from his and his boss's larceny. Nobody in any financial concern who had any useful knowledge or experience could possibly have had any doubt as to the nefariousness of the activities. I was only tangentially associated for a short time and I knew that what was happening was unsustainable and would lead to disaster. It is inconceivable that an insider like this motherfucker did not know.

That said, delusion has been elevated to a fine art in america. And this guy is a virtuoso.

This motherfucker stayed for the ENTIRE bunco operation because of greed. period. He stayed after the bailouts began out of greed. period. He's not lamenting anything but his own unfulfilled greed. period. His principled protestations are transparent bullshit. period.

Perhaps, if we're really lucky, DOJ can find an actionable trail that leads to this motherfucker.

what am I saying? the doj won't even investigate publicly admitted war crimes.

Too bad the voting scale only goes to 10, because this blog deserves an 11 or a 12. Jake is whining because his bonus was taken away when he is dang lucky he hasn't been tarred and feathered - and then hauled off and hung. For the love of mud. Jeeze.

"To justify the multi-million expenditure of traveling with a large diplomatic entourage using private jets, she would later claim diplomatic successes that included securing of a cheap supply of oil from China and Libya, and in the signing of the Tripoli Agreement. Imelda Marcos' extravagant lifestyle reportedly included five-million-dollar shopping tours in New York, Rome and Copenhagen in 1983, and sending a plane to pick up Australian white sand for a new beach resort. She purchased a number of properties in Manhattan in the 1980s, including the $51-million Crown Building and the $60-million Herald Centre; she declined to purchase the Empire State Building for $750m as she considered it "too ostentatious". Her New York real estate was later seized and sold, along with much of her jewels and most of her 175 piece art collection, which included works by Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Canaletto. She responded to criticisms of her extravagance by claiming that it was her "duty" to be "some kind of light, a star to give [the poor] guidelines."

She is the wife a sanguinary dictator of the Philippines who stepped down during the Reagan era. The family fortune came by redirecting international aid (to the Philippines) into Marcos many overseas bank accounts.

My point here is there's no limit to such behavior if it isn't kept in check.

Human history is full of examples of this kind of stuff and many of these can be found to be glorified in the holy bible.

Better not play with that stuff. Or we'll have to deal with the expression of our genes of survival in their most animal manifestation.

As was the article in the last Rolling Stone.
This fucking guy that was published in the NYTimes needs to be punched in the fucking soul.
Fuck that asshole.
Stupid prick is lucky people are not storming their abodes with torches.

I think that the public outrage is somewhat misdirected. The anger would be more properly targeted if aimed at the people who agreed to pay the bonuses rather than those who accepted them. What sort of moron writes a contract agreeing to multi million dollar payments even if the company is half a trillion dollars in the hole?

Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid.

Well, uh, no, Jake, you didn't. You agreed to work for approximately $1.2 million + $1 (less taxes, of course).

Right there is a sterling example of the kind of chicanary that ruled Wall Street. What he says--I agreed to work for $1--bears absolutely no relation to what was actually going on. Mr. DeSantis' self-pitying rant epitomizes the whole situation. His sense of entitlement, his self-pity, his ability to delude himself (I think he really believes he agreed to work for $1), his blaming everyone else but himself and his colleagues at AIG for the mess, etc., etc. If you haven't read his message, you really shouldn't miss it. The comments following are most interesting, too.

I'll bet that Jake got more for that bag of beans than the farmer, who grew them, harvested them and got them to Jake's market made.

Is that what is ment by 'middlemen' taking more than their share?

What I want to know tho is which desk had the guy that was buying oil and holding it until the price at the pump was $4-$5/gallon? That is the guy I want in court.

Right here, right now. Twilight Zone.

Seems to me I read or heard that Jake DeSantis not only quit, but he is going to give most if not all of the money to folks that really need it.

Excellent rant! Taibbi hits all the high (or low) points of this jerk's self-pitying wail.

However, my rage still burns white hot. This phone number is the number to the Financial Products Unit of AIG;

( 203 ) 222-4700

The Address: AIG Financial Products Unit
50 Danbury Rd.
Wilton, CT 06897

You mite think this is a story about the old Mafia Mob,what with names lake Desantis and Cassano,and WTF is a "financial product"?These Ins companies operate just like the Mob,selling "protection" with the mentality of'we'll get our cut either way",making money out of thin fucking air,just like the boys that built Vegas,but at least they did have something.not a "financial product".
These cocksuckers need to be trapped and released with out a fucking nickle on the south side of Chicago,they need to push a shopping cart with their "house" in it,I'd love to line them all up ,handcuffed together and allow anybody that wants to stand on a platform above them and piss on em.I mean thousands of people pissing on these arrogant SOB'S and televise it live all over the world.

I have been around people like this before. They think in terms of future earnings. If something goes wrong and what they anticipated does not materialise they feel wronged or as if something was stolen from them. Basically they count their chickens before they hatch, and they will get very angry if their projected future doesn't work out.

The only reason people work for $1.00 annually is so they don't have to pay Federal and State income taxes. I'm not sure how a bonus is taxed, but it is considered a hedge fund which are taxed at 15%. Must be a great deal if you can get it.

As for bonuses they usually come at Christmas and are a reflection of how well the business did over the last year. If the business did great you would get a big bonus. if the business only preformed on a mediocre level you might get a small bonus. However, if the bussiness did poorly or lost money you would get no bonus. It seems ridiculous that a gurantee of a bonus would be in a contract and owed no matter how the business proformed.

When GM and the other auto companies needed bailing out they rewrote the contracts negotiated by the labor unions and the workers had to take less money.

There was no one saying that you couldn't change those contracts. But, hey, those guys don't make millions a year. Some how if you are in a million dollar plus category the rules are different for the rich.

Personally I think the government should take all the money back, throw the culperates in jail and, then let them work at hard labor until they had paid back every cent they stole.

...all he has to do is implement a little belt tightening. Sell either the posh Manhattan apartment or the getaway mansion in East Hampton/Greenwich. Buy a smaller yacht. Unload his fractional ownership of that FalconJet. Sell the Bentley and instead drive a yuppie chariot BMW.

Unlike people who worked for a living and are now homeless due to either being laid off or their mortgage becoming impossible to afford, this officious prick will muddle through living a lifestyle that, if packaged and sold on the open market like so many other financial products, could easily support four entire families who are either unemployed, homeless, suffering from some illness that generates enormous health care bills, or any combination therof.

Taibbi hits it right on the nose...this asshole is crying crocodile tears. He stayed with AIGFP out of a sense of duty...right! Not one of those masters-of-the-universe Wall Street swine EVER did anything strictly out of a sense of duty, unless that duty was to themselves.

Now that the Wall Streeters are facing justifiable public outrage over their wanton greed and their money-worshipping Repugnican friends aren't in power, they try to elicit sympathy from those who they helped cheat along the way. Fuck 'em and feed 'em fish heads.

Its time for a re-watch of the movie WALL STREET,nobody plays a rich corporate dickhead as well as Michael Douglass does,I've been around alot of these pricks in a past life as a telecom tech,and they are just like that.
they expect everybody to kiss their lilly white ass and smile while doing it,fuck em all,we have all been slaves to them and American soldiers are dying everyday for them to prop up the value of their commodities markets ect.
fuckemfuckemfuckem.....

I have nothing but contempt for this whiny maggot for the reasons Matt so aptly iterated above.

One more reason - WTF did you do with all the money you made for the last 11 years? Did you piss away your millions on a trophy wife, Hampton mansion, private jet, Armani suits, $10,000 dinners and $5000/night hookers? You probably earned more in one year than most people make in a lifetime. If you had to work free for AIG the rest of your life, you still were paid too much money, especially since you pissed away all the money you already had and you were supposed to be a financial expert? What an idiot! If you didn't piss it all away, then WHAT ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT.

Another thing, I just read an article about an even bigger outrage than bonuses. Apparently, select AIG employees were given huge "loans" (hundreds of millions $$)right before they got the bailout money. Maybe douche bag is afraid he can't pay back his big loan his employer gave him and he'll lose trophy wife, mansion and jet?

How did these people get so dysfunctional?

People like him need to be publicly beaten. Or, just hang this piece of shit and be done with it.

An AIG performer drops his mask. Ooo-oh, ugliness. And what a good practice target for justifiable wrath.

As any number of commentators, even establishmentarians such as Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Krugman, have remarked, dear Timmy Geithner dodges from scam to scam as each is serially blown away. He makes an even better practice target for rage. Raise your skill level on a flitting shot.

All this practice should make it quite easy to aim justifiable fury at the chief mountebank of the O'Bushwas. Eh?

but they soon will be if they keep this up.

I don't know if this nematode realizes this, but ruling classes that fail as badly as he and his cronies have generally end up in a tumbrel or in front of a firing-squad.

These worms seem to think they can cast the whole world into Depression time and again, destroy and deform billions of lives, and suffer no more than a little whimpering over the restaurant table.

I think it would be really cool to prove them wrong.

The American population are heavily armed, and even their patience has limits.

This gross adding of insult to injury is one of those things that will try it, and bring closer the day when there will be no more public money to patch up their grotesque incompetence and these soft but inhuman wretches flee for their lives from the wrath of their innumerable homeless, jobless victims.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what these people sold and who they sold it to and how they went about selling the things I dont understand.

It has come to light that the officially allowed leverage rate was changed under the Bush Administration from about 8 to 1, to about 40 to 1. I'm not sure if that applied just to banks and if the leverage of insurance company credit defalt swaps was unlimited. It sounds like it, because apparently whatever it was the insured, they didnt have the money behind the insurnace promise (as if you home burned down and your insurnace company just said, "sorry, we really never had any money to pay for your home anyway, too bad").

I think what we need is "Dr. G." or "Quincy" or possibly "Dr. House" to get ahold of of of these abominations that were insured and disect them with scapel and tweezers and figure out exactly what was in the "cancerous bundle" of stuff, how it was all intertwined, who it came from, who it passed thru, who ended up with it, and how come so many people and companies are still profiting (thanks to taxpayer money) and who got left holding the "hot potatoe".

Banks and insurance companies have turned our economy into a house of smoke and mirrors. The rest of the large Corporations in America are a tad more honest----they just ship their jobs overseas to take advantage of 12 year old girls who will work in factories for 50 cents a day. Yes, its great to see pure Capitalism at work. It's like water; it always seeks its lowest possible level (or morality).

Rather than have a system whereby many hundreds of individuals can amass fortunes of hundreds of billions of dollars; and rather than have a system whereby many thousands of individuals can amass fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars (like the CEO's of the Fortune 1000) perhaps in Capitalism's purest form we can just have one single individual who can buy up, merge with, or do a hostile takeover of every company in the nation, and then that one person can operate all the companies as ONE, and amass a fortune of $10 trillion just for himself.

It's ironic to say the least.

Here we have reached the point where we are desperate for companies to stop laying off people so that people will have jobs so that people can buy goods and services. And yet, companies keep laying people off so that people will have no money and so that people CAN'T buy goods and services. It's like watching a beast devour itself.

I myself think that what we need is a national goal of 0% unemployment-----a national goal of full employment.

Every single person with wants to work should be afforded a job of some kind either by a State, Local or Federal entity or by a subsidized job in a business or coporation. This wouldnt be welfare and it wouldnt be unemployment. It would be work. It would be a job.

If we paid 12 million unemployed to work that would be 12 million people that were doing something, anything, somewhat productive, even if it was sweeping streets, working to help the homeless or homebound, attending to our national parks, preforming tasks at their local city hall, or pitching in to help a cash strapped municipal service.

Would it be expensive? Not as expensive as the present debacle that was brought upon us by a small cadre of aspiring millionaires, billionaires, and asshole-aires. Better to spend $1 trillion on 12 million unemployed than to give it to a handfull of CEO's and top Executives who can at the most buy three, or four, or five cars (or in the case of Sen. McCain, 7 cars and 7 homes). At least 12 million unemployed could in theory buy 12 million cars, or 12 million home computers, or take 12 million vacacations, or go out to eat in a restaurant 12 million times X once a week for a total of 624 million restaurant meals a year.

And 12 million extra working Americans could make a heck of a dent in bringing the home forclosure crisis to an abrupt halt, and to start home buying and auto buying once again.

Of course we could never have such a system. The American Corporate ideal seems to be to have a perpetual 4% or 5% unemployment rate (if you believe that figure). With millions of Americans always unemployed, Corporations always have a work force that is desperate to get a job, desperate to hold on to that job, and willing and able to accept the lowest wage or salary that is "reasonable". To accomplish this goal, Corporations thrive on encouraging as much illegal immigration as possilble, as much legal H1-B visa immigration as possible, and policies that keep down the minimum wage year after year after year. And of course, the final insult to injury to working Americans is to just take the freakin' jobs and ship them overseas as they have with 500,000 textile jobs in the last 15 years.

It's beyond me why we dont have a National Goal of 0% unemployment; just as we should have a National Goal of single payer universal healthcare for all; and a National Goal of a high school education for every American and a free college education for every qualified high school graduate. Would it cost money? Of course. What doesnt cost money? But look what we have gotten for the $3 trillion war in Iraq (total cumulative lifetime cost) and the $2 trillion or $3 trillion financial/banking/mortgate/insurance meltdown that has produced not a single thing of value, except to further seal the fates of 12 million unemployed.

Their should be no label attached to full employment, free healthcare and free education. Once we start calling it by an ideology or a lable like "Communism" or "Socialism" or some other such name, well, we are doomed before we start.

As a nation, about 50% of us (the conservatives, Republicans, and snakeworshipping faith healing crowds) are totally visionless.

Sen. Judd (the Jerk) was just on TV ranting about how we are spending ourselves into oblivion. Oddly, he said nothing about himself voting for the $3 trillion Iraq war or about the $500 billion-plus, annual Defense Budget. His shock seems to be that we would dare spend money on social services, education or health care. God forbid. His thinking must be if the trillions we spend every year isnt being spent on killing people in other nations, or preparing for killing people in the future, than it is not money well spent.

Anyway, my proposal, as I prepare for the Presidency once again is the following:

Single payer universal free heathcare for all. Full medical, hospital, dental, vision, home healthcare, nursing home care for everyone. And a special mental healthcare provision for Republicans, conservatives, Jesus freako faith healing types, so they can get proper help.

Mandated high school education for all (within reason).

Free college education for all who qualify.

Double the number of medical schools and double the number of doctors and nurses.

A national goal of 0% unemployment.

A workable system of controlled, structured legal immigration.

Incentives for companies to keep jobs in the US and to grow their workforces in the US.

Elimination of all employer baseed healthcare insurance to relieve companies of that unnecessary financial and administrative burden.

The folding into one single payer universal healthcare system all of the 50 States Workers Comp Insurance programs, as well all healthcare insurance connected with homeowners policies and automobile policies.

One single payer universal system would save approximatelly $1 trillion a year of the approx $2.5 trillion currently spent on healthcare.

Land Grants: 5 acres of free land in designated sparsely populated area of the country for anyone who would relocated and make it their primary residence.

A Federal National Habitat for Humanity that would help people rebuild their homes if destroyed by natural calamities.

Close regulation of the pharmaceutical industry with a re-evaluation of every prescription drug on the market to determine its real actual effectiveness, its real actual fair price, and its real actual requirement to be called a prescription drug. This will be done by a greatly expanded National Institute of Health to be partially financed by the exobritant revenue and profits stolen from American taxpayer by the drug companies thru Medicare, Medicaid, and the Bush, Frist, Delay, Hastert, Santorum "Medicare non-negotiation clause" which awarded the drug companies and unnecessary $750 billion 10-year windfall.

A Federal "stalking law" that would prohibit a special interest lobbyist or representative of a Corporation from coming within 100 yards (or shouting distance) of any US Senator or Congressman. Also, a "restraining order law" that would prohibit any Congressman or Senator from being contacted by phone, mail, email, in person, a handshake, a wink, a mumbled whisper, or any other means of contact by a Corporate, business or religious representative for the purpose of elicting a favor that would result in any type of financial or monetary value.

Cut the Defense Budge by 33 1/3% with emphasis on dismantling approx 90% of our 20,000 nuclear bombs.

Guaranteed employment for life for all Veterans and veterans spouses.

A NASA type plan to develope an alternative to the gasoline combustion engine as well as a national priority to develope a new type of energy to replace oil.

I'll think of more...........

This pity party de Santis is having for himself, and his subordinates who profited, reflects a grossly inflated sense of self-entitlement, one he and his peers haven’t earned. His letter is more than disingenuous; it's an insidiously manipulative PR move to make finance victims feel guilty for being angry. I'd go so far as to say it's completely staged on the recommendation of some crafty PR agency hired to make shitheads look better.

His gimme letter reveals the very soul of his greedy self-serving industry: no remorse, no regret, not a whiff of conscience but plenty of tears for itself.

So de Santis wants sympathy because he's being shunned at the martini bar and isn't being invited to rich people parties anymore. And he wants to keep his bonus. He’s only a victim in his own mind. Even if he believes every word he’s written, de Santis was at the very top of AIG's food chain.

He's saying he didn't know. Where was he then? Huh? As a VP he had a duty to know, he was responsible. There's no spin that will save him now. If he knew he's a dick and if he didn't know, as he claims, he's equally a dick. What part VP responsibility doesn't this asshole get?

The true victims are the ordinary people who got bilked, lost their life savings, their pensions, and the tens of millions around the world who are unemployed because of decisions made by men like de Santis. But it goes beyond this. The US chronically underfunds public education and health, has no public health insurance, has an incredibly low national minimum wage, and horrendous poverty. Governments have repeatedly said they haven't the money to provide public health care; haven't the money to raise people out of poverty or repair neighbourhoods. And now, because of scummy criminal self-serving guys like de Santis, the government is spending trillions to bail out an industry they destroyed. And de Santis is cheesed he's being made to feel bad. I would call this sociopathic behaviour.

I don’t care one iota for his feelings.

I'm still confused as to what those criminals at AIG were selling and who they were selling it to, and also, who determined what their bonuses would be and what the calculations were used to determine the bonuses (if in fact no one could figure out what the things were worth that they were selling)? Also, after the "thing" was sold to another person, what did the buyer actually do to see that the AIG seller got his money, and did the buyer know how much they were overpaying over the real worth of the "thing" that was bought?

I give up. I came close to understanding it once but then I suffered from mental overload and what I thought I was close to grasphing, I lost once again. Can this really be as hard as Calculus?

Here's another thought. Assume I am a recent college graduate from ABC University. I apply to AIG to work in their financial department as a "salesperson". (I'm assuming they called all those 350 people "salespeople). Here's the question? It's my first day on the job. What do I do? Then, its the second day on the job. What do I do?

I assume that some supervisor at AIG mentors me and teaches me about the "stuff" and the "things" I am suppose to be familiar with. Is there a book on the "stuff" and the "things" called AIG Stuff and Things to Sell authored by Mr. DeSantis (or someone else)?

OK. Now just lets assume I've spent 2 weeks under someones wing learning about the "stuff" and the "things" that that Division of AIG was selling. I may be those "credit default swaps" or it may be those "deriviatives".

My boss hands me a manila folder called "credit default swaps" and I open it up. Inside is s 50 page document that has all kinds of lined entries that look like "numbers". The number have dollar signs in front of them. There are all kinds of names of banks too. And columns of entries that list "mortgage timeframes, 10, 20, 30 years, etc. And then they have pages and pages and pages of addresses and peoples names, and balances, and interest amounts with % signs that go out to 6 decimal places. It's confusing.

I think these are the things called "things" or "stuff" or possibly "credit default swaps" but when my boss game me the secret manila folder he said something about them being derivitives, so I'm not sure what these "things" are derived from. Possibly he got them mixed up with the secret manila folder called "corn or soybean derivatives" which the guy in the next cubicle seems to be working feverishly on.

I'm not sure who the AIG recent hire like me in the next cubicle is talking to on the phone but there are more than 300 AIG salespeople all on the phone right now yelling and screaming and all excited and I'm not on the phone cause I dont know what I am selling and who I should sell it to, but my boss told me if I sell even one of these "things" that I will get a $1/4 million bonus. What to do.

I pick up the phone and call my mother. I start yelling and screaming in the phone and rattling off the lists fo numbers, addresses, percentages, decimals, bank names, home residence addresses from all over the US, and I keep telling my mother how much money she can make if she buys these "things" and "stuff" from me (even though I know she is in a nursing home and has Alzheimers, late stage).

My boss comes by my cubicle, hears me all excited talking to a "potential buyer" on the phone and he pats me on the shoulder and says, "keep it up Jim", as he moves on to the next cubicle.

After about 15 minutes my mother starts to fall asleep on the phone and a nurses aide picks up and says "I'm sorry but your mother just fell asleep and she threw up her strained peas and carrots that she had for breakfast, you'll have to call back".

The nusrses aide hangs up but I continue to yap, yap, yap on the phone. I stand up, I sit down, I twirl and swirl in my swivel chair. My boss comes by again and asks how I'm doing and I lie. I say, "I think I have a hot one". That's what everyone else who is selling "stuff" on the phone always say. Eveyone always has a "hot one". I'm not sure if they are talking to their mother's too.

At lunch I asked the other new guy who he was calling to sell the stuff too and he said he was calling his "contacts". But I think he was a newphew of Alan Greenspan. I asked another guy too and he said he was calling his "contacts" but his father used to be a VP at Morgan Stanley and his stepmother was a secretary who had an affair with the VP of Operations at Lehman Brothers. I dont know anybody. I dont have any "contacts". Just my mother in the nursing home.

Anyway, that's the scenario I am wondering about. Who the hell do these AIG salespeople call to sell these apparently grossly overinflated "things" and "stuff"? Can one just open up a White Pages Phone Book and start calling people and say "Hi. My name is Jim. And I'd like to upgrade your Comcast cable service and also like to see if you'd be interested in buying some credit defaulth swaps we have lying around cause we are offering them for $25 million a package for the month of March."

And of course my next question is: After some "contact" buys these "things" what do they do with them. Does he buyer guy go to his boss and say, "Hey boss, I just got a call from so-and-so at AIG and I bought this "stuff" in a manila folder that has 50 pages of all kinds of columns of percentages, dollar signs, names of banks, and something to do with mortages of more than 1000 homes that people have bought who dont have a clue that we own their mortgage now. Hey boss, isnt that great. I just paid $25 million for these. What do we do with them now?"

Does he boss at the buyers end say, "Good job. We've been looking to buy that kind of stuff for $25 million. I'll write out a check to AIG right away and get it in the mail to them is afternoon and by the way how do you know it was a good deal to buy that "stuff" for $25 million?

Does the buyer guy salesman then say "Well, the seller guy at AIG said that if we held it for even 30 days this manila folder is going to be worth $40 million easily, and then they'll buy it right back from us for $40 million, and we'll even have the option of re-buying it from them after we sell it back to them, and after they re-buy from us, so it looks like a good deal cause its 50 pages long and has colums of decimals that have 6 places to the right of the decimal point. I dont see how we can go wrong cause home price are doubling every 12 hours and the price of corn and pork bellies is tripling every nano second even though this secret manila foler isnt part of the corn and pork belly deriviatives; but we can change the title at the top of Page One and it will be".

So, if anyone can answer me as to who I would call on the first day on my job at AIG to sell this "stuff" to I sure would appreciate it, cause I just sent in my resume and cover letter and where they listed who I was giving as a reference I put down my mother (which may be problematic down the road).

However, my mother is certainly in the market for a good credit default swap. She's been in that nursing home now for 3 years and whoever calls on her room phone and tries to sell her "stuff" she buys. She's as kind and as willing as they come. In the last two years she's signed up for more than 65 magazine subscriptions and more than 15 automobile extended warranties, even though she's stuck in that room with an wrist alarm bracelet on should she try to escape.

I've been thinking (which is dangerous for me) that here is what I will do. I'll get a copy of the White Pages for my town and I'll type up a page that looks official and call it "Credit Default Swaps for the Town of Canton" and I'll rip the cover off the White Pages. Then I'll just go down to Morgan Stanely or AIG or some big place and walk in and tell them I'm from XYZ Company and that I am insuring every fuckin' home in my town for its full and fair value and that I'd like to sell them the rights to the mortages should anyone default on payment, and that I was sure that no one would default and that I am only asking $75 million for the entire package and that I am guaranteeing that I will buy back the "thing" for $125 million within one year, so they can't go wrong.

Whatdaya think? Am I getting close to understanding all this?

for scraping off the varnish of the reporting the last 13 months or so...

let's set up a people's worldwide court... no fucking govt ANYwhere seems to be have any stomach for it...

1) PUBLISH - pictures, names, addresses, phone numbers, license plates, cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, ANY fucking identifiable personal information... www.THEBASTARDSWHOSTOLEOURMONEY.com

2) PURSUE THESE BASTARDS in the court of PUBLIC opinion... call them... write them... visit them 24/7/365... twitter and text their every fucking movement... like the old union strikes... stand out front when their waiting for a fucking cab... follow them into public restrooms... while they're ordering cappuccino.. send letters to their alma mater... their grade schools... their childhood pastors... every person they ever had human contact with... and ASK FOR THE MONEY BACK...

3) LIST THEIR ASSETS - show up - ask to spend a night in the mansion - yacht - club - we've already put it on OUR tab...

i figure some several hundred million people worldwide have been directly and indirectly fucked by these bastards...

lets - by people's decree - make the world they made so miserable - so miserable for them - they won't stick their head outside for the next fifty years or they can fucking move to iceland...

"hey fuckheads - where's our money?" and if you don't answer me - people's court of millions will track your every movement for the next 50 years....

"...most people who make that much money have enough sense to realize their cushy lifestyles are an accident of fate, of birth, of class, not something that is 'supported' by some unwritten natural law of compensation."

Uhm, my experience of people who live a privileged lifestyle has been that they never realize that it's by accident. They all totally believe that it's deserved, and furthermore that they've earned it. Yes, I did say "earned." That's how they justify saying things like Big Babs Bush said about the storm refugees in the stadium: "They're all underprivileged to begin with, so this does quite nicely for them."

She thinks people are poor because they deserve to be, and that she, conversely, is rich because she "earned" it. They ALL feel that way. They can't help it.

BTW, JamesPB, I like your presidential platform. I'd vote for you. If I thought "They" would let your name anywhere near a ballot.

The issue is that the Iraq war, the energy price boom, and the financial collapse are linked - a theme the press is avoiding.

Thus, this is hardly "Obama's plan", anymore than the bailout was "Bush's plan". Bush was more of a performer than a planner, recall? Recall also the "seamless intergration" of the handover? You can imagine Paulson and Bernanke and Summers and Geithner in one room - would they be arguing? Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Obama's top political donors in the big race were Goldman Sachs employees. Bipartisanship in action! Each side forked over many billions to AIG, and hence to Goldman Sachs ($10 billion in counterpary deals).

It didn't stop there - huge AIG bailouts went to Barclays, Societe General, Deutschebank (Britain, France, Germany), as well as to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, due to so-called counterparty agreements. Bonuses? Who cares about a $165 million when hundreds of billions are being lifted under our noses? This is a tag team effort at finance, no doubt about it.

The pump-and-dump charge applies to institutions that bought up large numbers of subprime loans and organized them into credit securities. It would have applied also to the ratings agencies that gave the security packages AAA ratings - Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, etc. The “dump” part would have occurred when global investment funds and pension funds were conned into buying such securities as part of their long-term financial plans.

There’s a lot of evidence that this is exactly what Goldman Sachs did, and that’s why their executives got huge bonuses in 2008 - Goldman Sachs largely dumped their investments before they all went sour - they were thus “ahead of the market” - or they were deliberately manipulating the market - kind of like the much ballyhooed “death bounce” of Wall Street last week, which resulted in investor profit-taking - a mini pump-and-dump, aided immensely by the bipartisan taxpayer-financed bailouts of Oct 2008 and more recently as well. Recall Bush and Obama shaking hands at the inaugural event? What they share in common is that their initial primary campaign funding came via finance corporations and energy corporations - for example, MBNA and Enron for GW, and Goldman Sachs and Exelon for Obama.

Now, there is a taboo topic here. It’s one that neither the Republican leadership, nor the Democratic leadership, nor the corporate media want to discuss. It is the relationship between the financial turmoil, the sudden run-up in energy prices coincident with the Iraq war/occupation and the saber-rattling over Iran. What drove the price up was the activity of Wall Street traders on the commodity markets, especially in the area of petroleum futures. They used the fear of scarcity to whip up the price, and they kept it up as long as oil demand was not affected.

With most Americans driving gas guzzlers, demand kept steady as prices were driven up - and billions began to accumulate in the coffers of oil traders and as well as in the national funds of oil nations like the UAE. That explains the record-shattering profits of all the major IOCs (intl oil corps) over the past few years right there. Notice that this was all made possible by the Iraq invasion.

There may have been certain government insiders who counted on this happening and made their bets appropriately, but I believe that it was largely fueled by opportunistic greed - a rush of sharks after a gutted fish - and yes, they ordered gutted fish for dinner.

However, their entrée turned out to be indigestible subprime loan packages - and maybe here is where the banks and global oil funds got shystered themselves by the collaboration between mortgage brokers, home assessors and homeowners, who worked together to refinance and reassess as often as possible, with each one out to screw over the other two as well. The more times a house is refinanced, the more commissions the broker and assessor make - and the banks were also charging higher commissions for subprime loans, as they made “more attractive” security packages, with higher future payouts.

“Reckless stupidity fueled by greed and hubris” - that’s what I call it. The fundamental proximal causes include the Iraq war and the manipulation of energy by Wall Street oil traders that the Iraq war made possible. Other primary causes include the repeal of Glass-Steagall restrictions on investment-commercial banks, c. 1999, thanks to Rubin and Citigroup, who just pulled down billions in counterparty kickbacks via the bipartisan bailout of AIG...

Focusing on the AIG bonuses instead of the AIG counterparty kickbacks is a big mistake - but it is the kind of PR response that any savvy "crisis management PR team" would use.

Your rebuttal to De Santis is full of obvious common sense, but my hostility toward De Santis after reading his self-serving drivel clouded my mind. Your analysis broke through and cleared out my head quite a bit. The only thing I would truly like to know is what radio shows De Santis listens to in the afternoon. I'm thinking Hannity, his vocabulary is too big to be a dittohead, thought the exaggerated sense of entitlement and the pity whoring are strong indicators that way too.

> I think that the public outrage is somewhat misdirected. The anger would be more properly targeted if aimed at the people who agreed to pay the bonuses rather than those who accepted them.

Blame the Congressmen that let them do this (Gramm, Dodd) and the Congressmen that keep rubberstamping SPENDACRAZY OBAMA'S GREAT CASH GIVEAWAYS (all funded by borrowing money from China for crying out loud). White or blue collar, criminals are criminals. For all the public baaaawing what has been done? Obama is publicly wringing his hands then giving the bankers the keys to Fort Knox.

OBAMA LIED. WHERE IS MY HOPE AND CHANGE? Read Matt's article in Rolling Stone on this.

It's sad: Reps and Dems. They're not different. The only independents that put up their hands are batshit crazies like Ron Paul. America, if you don't like being reamed up the ass, then stop voting for the terrible twins and get a real alternative.

That's...just...what everyone is thinking.

That would be over $185,000. To me, that makes his whining even more maddening... well, that and that fact that his fellow crooks are probably just as whiny!

Well, pardon my ignorance, but you did clear up one of my questions regarding Mr. DeSantis' letter. He stated that he'd spent the last 12 months dismantling the company. I was wondering what he was dismantling in March, 2008. Well, according to you, AIG-FP was a dead duck as of February, 2008. So, for six months, until the bailout, Mr. DeSantis was dismantling a company he knew was worthless, and he told no one. But we're supposed to consider him a hero, or at the very least, a victim.

Another interesting comment he made was this:

"That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts."

That statement leads me to believe that Mr. DeSantis received 1/4 of his retention bonus in December, so his use of the $740K bonus he received on 3/16/09 is disingenuous at best. One could argue that his sentence meant that more than one quarter of the people due bonuses were paid early, but I doubt that an EVP of AIG-FP, however noble, is going to let others get paid their bonus when he is not. Looks to me like the $740K amount was only 3/4 of what he got as a bonus.

Like you said, his arguments are bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. The man ought to be tarred and feathered and run out on a rail.

Until the criminals in the Bush White House became the personification of irresponsibility. What happened to the good old days of measured rape and pillage eh? When stealing was measured and deliberate.
All of a sudden we got these young punks making shit up as they went along and pissed in the punch bowl. Don't they have America in mind!! The end of a rain bow! Greedy mother fuckers messed it up for us greedy muther fuckers and now we have to allow regulations.
And that is it really. The barons have to give it up a little bit so Obama can stabilize the ship. He has been given the hand so long as he doesn't upset the water.
I like the way Obama is graying quickly at the hairline and keeping a finger on family and family ties. That guy is being hammered and is a quick study and I got faith in him and his organization to shake things up positively. He will prevail in some startling ways.

Mutually Assured Destruction was our policy during the Cold War of the 1950's to 1989. If the USSR launched a nuclear missle at us we would launch the whole kit and kaboddle at them, and in turn they would lauch whatever they had left, at us----assuring that we would both totally destroy and anihilate both our nations and the entire planet. Some nutty Generals were quite willing and able to carry out this madness.

AIG sounds like it was knowingly engaged in its own version of financial M.A.D.

Since we were intelligent enough (or lucky enough) to not have lauched 40,000 nuclear weapons at the USSR, no matter what happens with AIG, JP Morgan, our financial system and the American economy, it wont be nearly as bad as would have been a nuclear war with the USSR.

So we are doing pretty good. Actually, we are doing excellent. Not a single nuclear warhead has landed on our soil. It can only be clear sailing from here.

If the Fed didnt give a dime to any bank or to AIG or anyone else and just let the whole fuckup collapse, along woth the world economy, it wouldnt hurt as much as a two superpower nuclear holocaust. So we are doing pretty good.

Afterall what is the worst that can happen? Yes, we could be all living on the streets but the quality of cardboard boxes is far superior today than it was, say, back in the 1930's. Many of them are four-ply and will last quite a few weeks if properly covered with plastic sheeting.

Also, many parts of the country are warm, year round. Bridges can provide much adequate shelter from the elements and a common cause, like survival, can often bring people close together.

Skills such has how to identify berries and leaves that can be eaten would be good to have. And also, how to identify and catch small rodents for snacks can provide an adequate supply of protein until one can catch larger prey, like AIG executives, who can then be canabalized for good sources of fat, protein and calcium (from their bone marrow)-----will all come in as handy skills to have.

I'm optimistic. I'm glad AIG's Cassanno and DeSantis weren't in charge of our nuclear ICBM's. We are all still alive. Yes, we will have to work until we are 85 or 90 years old at minimum wage, but, that's Capitalism.

I dont think AIG has a chance of surviving. Too much bad PR. It's like a restaurant where they have a salmonella outbreak. They never recover the business cause no one wants to go back and risk getting the shits. Anyone doing any business with AIG will risk getting the shits. Even if your home or business burns down, who knows if they'll really have enough money to cover your loss. They might just tell you they have the shits and can't pay you.

It sounds like Cassano was engaged in embezzeling company funds. He was doing business, selling financial instruments, that were backed by money that he knew his company and his Division didnt have. No doubt others knew too. And as the collapse got nearer others knew too.

Anyway, I've heard that you shouldnt eat the read berries cause they can be poisonous; and that before you eat beetles you should pull off their heads and dont eat that part.

You can always sleep in your car, unless your mother currently lives with you. She will make your life a Holy Hell if she has to sleep sitting up in the front seat every night, and you can be sure she damn well wont even appreciate being able to stretch out in the back seat.

Also, remember, personal hygiene is very important when living in close quarters. Either everyone washes up or no one should. That should be the rule.

Dont shoplift. A friend of mine tried to hide a 5 pound Perdue frozen chicken down the front of his pants. He looked like Tom Jones in tight pants. And he got caught by an observant clerk, who are today called Senior VP's of Cash Regisiters.

A better method is to stand outside a supermarket and ask shoppers as they leave the store if they can spare a banana or a slice of cheese.

Once I had a homeless man, as I was eating a sandwich on a park bench in NYC, he asked me if he could have a bite. Thats all he wanted. He didnt want any money. And he didnt want my whole sandwich. All he wanted was a bite. So I gave him half the sandwich; whereupon he then asked me if I had a cookie. So I asked him if he wanted just half the cookie cause I was willing to give him HALF the cookie. He replied, "You can't afford a whole fuckin' cookie. Fuck you." And he left.

Anyway, at least we havent had a nuclear holocaust. That guy from AIG should have been arrested already. He should be in jail. He shouldnt even get a trial. Some fuckups are so big that the perpetrators should go right to jail, regardless. Most Republican Senators and Congressmen should be in jail too. Bush too. And Cheney. Even Laura Bush should be in jail. She's as bad as Mrs. Madoff. She had to know her husband started the war in Iraq under false pretenses. She slept with the monkey every night.

It's enough to make ya sick. We are so fucked up, we are fucked. And all the while the drug companies, healthcare insurance companies, energy companies are loving all this, because no one is watching how they are raping and plundering the economy. It's like our wonderful nation is getting gang raped.

i've been trying to get my peers - all affected of course - by the global financial meltdown - tying to get them engaged --

taibbi's RS March article is a super reference doc on who... what... why... when... and where in plain english...

this is the reply i get...

I could only read half of that story that you send. I was so long that my
eyes were killing me. Does that person always write huge stories?

and this is the vast majority of the public -

even have a friend who's worth millions...

a year ago... i tried to engage him on what was coming...

answer?

"You need to go home and watch more cartoons. You need to trust in the overall system to work things out"

WTF????

mr. millions also is taking a big bath on his investments... but... everytime i bring up the facts... everybody gets up and leaves...

THIS is the problem... the only way the subprime debacle could have happened is with the participation of the market... i don't care how many bad actors are in govt. industry etc....

i was being pushed a no money down... double loan... forgo the DP... adjustable... i threw the guy out and took a 30 fixed w/ no prepayment penalty... bought what i could afford... had some cushion set aside... don't have cc debt... and a zillion other consumer product monthly recurring service fees...

the banks know this... elected politicians know this... and we... know this...

secretly... a lot of people are waiting for barbara s.

"the way things were".

so it goes. so it has gone. so it will be.

It's true, Geithner is a fitting target for our wrath. But let's not forget the man who gave him a seat in his cabinet as one of his team of rivals, who insists he's doing a good job and who won't accept his resignation even if it's offered, the man at whose desk the buck stops.

Matt-

Let's go down this road . . . Matt, I think your writing sucks, and because I think it sucks, and most of America thinks your writing sucks, you don't deserve to be paid. Nevermind that you have entered into an agreement with you employer that clearly states you will get paid for the work that you perform, because the American public thinks your writing sucks, therefore, you do not deserve to get paid for it. Technically, you're writing is ok (gramatically speaking of course), but we just don't like what you write about or how you write. Because we don't like it, we are going to put in a request that your pay be withheld. Nevermind that you decided to work for $1 last year, you still get 0.

Here's the point in case you didn't get it. . .the guy did the work that he was supposed to do, and he apparently did it the way his bosses asked him to do it, within the confines of the law, while adding value for his company. Ya, his company sucks and they screwed a lot of stuff up. But honestly, just because you don't like the way he did his work does not mean that you have the right (or judgement) to insist that the guy does not get paid. Really, how arrogant (and ignorant) can you be?

On another note, if a teacher wanted to get paid $750,000 per year, then don't be a teacher. If a plumber wants to make $750,000, then don't be a plumber. Work hard and do something else for a living. Get a job that promotes based on ability and achievement, not 'tenure.' This class envy bullshit has to stop. Jake DeSantis most likely worked his ass off to get the chance to earn money like he is used to making, and as long he is within the confines of the law and morality, as well as provide value to his company, then he deserves every single penny, and probably more.

By the way Matt, I think that you deserve to be paid for the work that you do, even though I really do think your writing sucks.

Sure. All too true. This is corrupt human nature, not America's unique slimy underbelly.

The slime just happens to be in the spotlight right now.

My question is for Matt: why is it him that has the spotlight right now? His last article in RS was brilliant, but, why didn't the WSJ or NYT write it months ago?

Is it some main stream media manipulation thing, a typical self-evaluation flaw from Ny-based organizations, or is there a star chamber puppeteer pulling the strings on this grand show?

OK seems everyone here is under the opinion that AIG exec's were making too much money. That's a fine opinion to have, sure but perhaps it would help if you defined just how much money they should be making. So how's about it? Exactly (or even generally) how much money do you think the quoted AIG guy here should make for his year of efforts?

Do you get the irony in trying to decide just how much a man is allowed to earn in the Land of the Free? Sure, you may just be talking about the top .1% now, but how long till someone want to expand that to 1%? Then to 10%? I've yet to see a government initiative that didn't take that route. (Anyone believe their state government when they say they are 'temporarially' raising your state's sales tax? Yeah, I don't either.)

So then, what exactly, are you complaining about here? Either you're whining about the weather (pointless) or you're agitating for wage controls (brainless). If its the former, consider upping your skill-set so your time is worth thousands per hour and then see how you feel about the subject (otherwise known as walking in the other guy's shoes). You might find yourself with a different perspective on the subject. If its the latter, then I'm a fool for starting an argument here and you have my apologies.

That is all,

If Jake DeSantis knew nothing of what was going on or what its effect would be on the economy, then he's worth the $1 salery, not the bonus.

God damn, Matt! Tell us how you really feel, lol. The swine really did deserve both barrels, didn't he? I still think he got off lucky.

Mr. Taibbi,

You seem to have parsed the DeSantis letter quite expertly, and responded to his words, as expected, quite cowardly. You picked and chose every sentence you did not like, and backed you argument up with conjecture, speculation, and ill conceived populism.

Jake DeSantis worked in the commodities trading arm of AIGFP, not financial derivative, so why would he be expected to know of the goings on in that department? He also states that his division has made $100 bil/year. This to me would state that he is quite an asset to the company, or as you state our company. How did this productive member of AIGFP not deserve his contractually obligated compensation? I think it is safe to argue that without people like him on board the taxpayers will only lose on their investment in AIG.

You make a lot of bold statements, all of them based on assumptions. To fairly and responsibly write this response, would it not have been a better idea to have researched your points like journalist you claim to be? Would it not have bee fair to have approached EVERY claim in the letter, and not just the facts you cherry picked?

There are so many points that you forgo in the name of sensationalism, this is clearly avoiding facts to get a better story for yourself. How are you unlike the unscrupulous financial professionals in the mortgage industry that avoided the facts that got us into our current financial quagmire?

You sell yourself as part of a solution, but sir, you are a mere carpetbagger.