World-News

Outrage against American International Group (AIG) is set to grow after the ailing insurance giant said that more than half the taxpayer bailout money it has received has been paid to investment firm Goldman Sachs and several European banks.

http://english.aljazeera.net/business/2009/03/20093152398905338.html



Citigroup CEO awarded $10.8 million

Citigroup Inc awarded Chief Executive Vikram Pandit $10.82 million of compensation in 2008, a year when the government propped up the bank with $45 billion of capital.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52F3MP20090316



Industrial production down for fourth straight month

Output declines 1.4%, more than forecast.
http://snipurl.com/dy8fa



America's Youngest Outcasts

One in 50 U.S. Children Is Homeless Each Year: New Report Ranks 50 States From Best To Worst.

http://www.homelesschildrenamerica.org/


From Information Clearing House

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Grassley to AIG execs: Do the honorable thing

Politico

03/16/09

Sen. Charles Grassley is so angry over AIG bonuses that he says the executives should resign or kill themselves. In a comment aired this afternoon on WMT, an Iowa radio station, Grassley (R-Iowa) said: The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things — resign, or go commit suicide. The radio clip was also aired on WTOP, a news radio station in Washington...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20083.html



Moral outrage in the age of AIG

Christian Science Monitor
by staff

03/18/09

Ever peel back an onion to find it rotten at the core? Both the protecting outer layers and the rot are offenders. For Americans, that is much the same experience as they learn more about AIG. Once the largest risk-taker in US home prices, AIG is now Wall Street’s largest recipient of bailout money — and it just paid bonuses to its most culpable workers. Congress plans a public flogging Wednesday of Edward Liddy, CEO of American International Group. It may not matter that he took the job only last fall at the government’s request to prevent a corporate collapse that, at the time, Congress and others thought would bring down the financial system. At the least, this moral venting might help reveal the truth behind AIG’s risky actions and the regulators who were supposedly watching the exotic insurance schemes that AIG sold to expand the sale of mortgage-backed securities...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0318/p08s01-comv.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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A.I.G. Using "Suicide Strategy" to Push Bonuses

Matt Renner, Truthout: "As nationwide populist anger boils after the news that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars may be given to employees of the insurance-giant-turned-government-liability American Insurance Group (A.I.G.), President Obama promised to try to block what he described as an 'outrage' Monday, but a group of former regulators said the administration must get even tougher in A.I.G. Economics and law Professor William K. Black, a famous figure in the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s for his role as a senior regulator who fingered the then speaker of the House and 'The Keating Five' for doing favors for bankers, has been a vocal critic of the bailout programs, which began during the Bush administration. In an interview with Truthout, Professor Black said that A.I.G. is using a 'suicide strategy' to hold the government hostage and keep the bailout funds flowing."

http://www.truthout.org/031709J



The Real Scandal of A.I.G.

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "The real scandal of AIG isn't just that American taxpayers have so far committed $170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail -- the most money ever funneled to a single company by a government since the dawn of capitalism -- nor even that AIG's notoriously failing executives, at the very unit responsible for the catastrophic credit-default swaps at the very center of the debacle, are planning to give themselves over $100 million in bonuses. The scandal is that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money."

http://www.truthout.org/031709L



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