Market crash: are we there yet ?

[TropicCat]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

Someday you'll think through the whole reality of "Fair Trade" instead of the bumper sticker CD.

Don't jump on CD for his trade views. I still have hope that you'll think this through and agree that "Fair trade" is a must have and Free Trade is an illusion created specifically to eliminate America's middle class. We have 25 years of history and the results are irrefutable.

That dog don't hunt.

[TropicCat]

Originally Posted by camaraderie

Market capitalization on AIG this morning is 3.7 billion dollars. This is what investors think the company is worth.
We just dumped 173 billion dollars of YOUR $$ into this turkey. I'd be more concerned about where the missing 170 billion went than a few bonus checks.

Amen to that

[TropicCat]

Originally Posted by Cruisingdad

Good God help us. It is a mob mentality, led by a bunch of uneducated senators.I would sue them.

Sheesh Brian, calm down, most of them are attorneys... it's the only job they could get.

Originally Posted by Cruisingdad

All this so a government, no a few key senators and beaurocrats, can look good... look tough. The same senator(s) that backed the bailout in the first place. Please tell me if I am wrong,

You're not wrong. It's why they call this politics. Besides, the average American citizen has no idea why all this came to pass and those Senators would love to keep it that way.

Originally Posted by Cruisingdad

For the first time, I am utterly embarrased for my country.
- CD

Ummm..invading the wrong country after 911 didn't embarrass you? It should have.

[TropicCat]

The AIG situation is a news cycle smokescreen, and it's working.

The Fed just announced it's buying $300 billion in treasuries. Essentially the government is now buying it's own notes.

This means that the inflation gas pedal just got depressed. The $$USD is now falling against the Euro. The DOW plunged 100 points on the news but it looks like the plunge protection team is buying to stabilze the market.

[MMR]

I'm with CD on this one...who in their right mind would want to work for AIG now and potentially expose themselves to this kind of madness?

Anyone with any brains and any savy is going to find a job elsewhere, FAST, where they can get paid what they were promised, and what they earned.

Where there is no integrity and no positive market brand, there is no company.

Look at how quickly Arthur Anderson folded with the Enron scandal. Although criminal charges were subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States, Arthur Anderson has not returned as a viable business. 85,000 jobs lost.

AIG is in the same kind of business, where brand integrity is a HUGE part of what they are selling. The US gov and this witch hunt is going to kill AIG, losing all those jobs, and the "investment" the taxpayers made.

Any company CEO with two neurons firing watching this mess should be figuring out how to pay back any fed money and get as far away as possible from "bailout" money and assistance.

[TropicCat]

Originally Posted by Cruisingdad

The US Government has NO, NO, NO business deciding who should and should not get bonuses!!!

If you owned 80% of a company, wouldn't you have a right to determine the bonus structure?

I wouldn't be surprised if people jumped ship. The company failed guys. If CD is right, it should be broken up and sold. The units with value will survive and we get our money back.

[Cruisingdad]

Originally Posted by TropicCat

The AIG situation is a news cycle smokescreen, and it's working.

The Fed just announced it's buying $300 billion in treasuries. Essentially the government is now buying it's own notes.

This means that the inflation gas pedal just got depressed. The $$USD is now falling against the Euro. The DOW plunged 100 points on the news but it looks like the plunge protection team is buying to stabilze the market.

Give me a break, Rick.

It's only a Trillion Dollars. We do that about every month. What we need to focus on the big money, like the bonuses. This is what is going to bring down the country. Not a measely Trillion dollars.

- CD

[erps]

Originally Posted by TropicCat

If you owned 80% of a company, wouldn't you have a right to determine the bonus structure?

Yes, the present/future bonus structures.

[SailorGregS]

The gov is the majority owner of AIG, they will make the decision who gets what and when. Certainly not any bonus's and they will get the money back.

[sailaway21]

It would take a lot to keep me at a company that I knew was on the ropes. I'd be betting that what they paid me was either a great windfall for me or it would be enough to get me by until I found a similar job.

Part of my problem in accepting the bonus and staying at the job is the guy at the desk next to mine. He does the same thing as I do but for a different part of the world and there really are only a few of us that do what we do. Then there's my assistant, who could step into my job tomorrow since I trained him for it, and I don't know if he's staying or going either. If they leave, I stay, and things go bad; there's two jobs in my limited high dollar field that are gone. I'm going to need a lot of money to stay.

I does seem that AIG declared almost everyone a critical employee to be retained and, as bljones states, the policy is of dubious merit as some leave anyway, complete with bonus!

Chump change.

The real money, the 27 billion dollars that went to Deutsche Bank as well as Goldman Sachs, who was "healthy" is the scandal for the American tax payer.

And CD, you're wrong as you so often are about the most basic of things. (How can you be right on the bonus matter and yet so confused on something as basic as free trade? Oh, you haven't educated yourself with the Friedman tape yet, have you?) If I own 80% of Coca-Cola, I can know any damn formula I want to know. And I'll just start firing directors and management until I get down to a level where someone will talk. That IS how it works. Chances are, if I own 80% of Coke, I've other matters more important on my mind.

The Canadian solution offered is, at best, entertaining. There's plenty of regulation on the books already and don't get to thinking this is an American problem. If AIG went under, you'd see just as many Euro and Canuck banks failing as US ones.

I'm not of the position that AIG should have been bailed out but, I must acknowledge that, if financial Armageddon were to have ensued were they not, it would have been unconscionable to not do so. In my opinion, the USD government should have, by now, itemized the toxic aspects of AIG's business and assumed their liability. They should have then sold the remainder of the company on the open market. Thus hopefully making a profit and getting out of the insurance business altogether.

Ignore Rick on the matter of free trade as well; he doesn't even have a CDL. (g)