Starting off the new year by shooting ourselves in the foot?

Warren is outraged AIG is thinking about suing the government... which means the very people who saved their sorry ass.

KBR wants us to pay for their negligence.

Australia is on fire.  And the world is overheating...

And then there's this: Gun-toting soccer mom found shot dead and another school shooting in California and YouTube gun activist Keith Ratliff  is found shot dead and NRA Vows To Stop Tucson From Destroying Guns and NRA: White House Meeting 'Had Nothing To Do With Keeping Our Children Safe' and  Tactical Response CEO Threatens To 'Start Killing People' Over Possible Obama Gun Measure  (and an update where he tries to clarify things) and Steven Colbert agrees with the NRA (*cough*) and NTodd notes the historical silliness and Alex Jones goes off about guns talking with Piers Morgan.

(updated)

Trying on $400 dollar shoes

Just to try and understand the attitude of the banksters.

The Mindset of an AIG executive by Diane Brady

Some select quotes from the article:

“I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G.” The list of who to vilify grows ever smaller. Even colleagues in the financial products unit are determined to distance themselves from the credit default swaps. These were highly profitable products produced by highly compensated (and, I would guess, much celebrated) people when times were good. Now, it would appear that a handful of largely anonymous—and now departed—executives are responsible for AIG’s downfall, not an institution that fostered and rewarded a culture of risk.

“The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation.” This is the argument that has so many people feeling so angry. Just because you write enough transactions to rack up, say, $100 million in profits for your firm doesn’t mean you’re automatically entitled to millions in compensation. By that logic, producing millions in losses should send you reaching into your own pocket to repay your salary. For too long, there have been excessive rewards for short-term profits and little if any incentive to protect against the downside.

They were for it before they were against it

It is a rather curious spectacle to see congressional Republicans express outrage at the exorbitant bonuses being handed out by bailed-out companies and blame the Obama administration for failing to curb the practice with AIG. Because when the first installment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program was passed it was the Bush administration and GOPers in Congress who were insisting that caps on executive compensation not be part of the legislation.

Just making sure we keep our facts straight because there's just too many people trying to rewrite history.....

Tengrain does it again!

Beware the evil doers!

Let the wild rumpus begin

Rewriting history:

...In an article about the Obama administration's "effort to undo bonuses at A.I.G.," The New York Times reported, "The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall." But at no point in the article did the Times note that the Treasury Department at the time was then-President Bush's Treasury Department. Indeed, the article did not mention Bush or his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson at all, much less report that the Bush Treasury Department worked with the Federal Reserve in carrying out last year's bailouts and bought AIG stocks notwithstanding the existence of these bonus contracts.

The fake uproar about Gibb's joke about Dick Cheney:

Dick Cheney is one of the most divisive -- and disliked -- political officials in memory. Maybe Chip Reid and Rick Klein haven't heard, but he just presided over the virtual collapse of the American economy and is directly implicated in severe war crimes and other pervasive criminality. Yet they speak of him -- and demand that everyone else treat him -- as royalty: This is the former Vice President of the United States you're talking about; have you no decency?

Journalists love to depict themselves as hard-nosed, rambunctious, ornery adversaries of establishment orthodoxies and political power. The reality is the opposite: there simply is no class of people more reverent of the political establishment and more devoted to protecting and defending its prerogatives.

Good for you, Canada! Thank you!!:

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - More than 100 protesters chanted "war criminal" and flung shoes in Calgary on Tuesday, angry that former U.S. President George W. Bush was in the Canadian city to give his first speech since leaving the White House.

At least two demonstrators were hauled away by police after brief skirmishes, as 1,500 business people in the oil patch city waited outside a convention center for an hour to pass through tight security and enter the C$400-a-plate ($315) luncheon.

Media were barred from the invitation-only event, during which Bush had been expected to reflect on his eight years as president.

In fact... give us our money back

After all, it's our (the taxpaying public's) money; we have a right to know where that money goes, what debts are being paid and however else those billions are being used. It's time, fumes Cramer, for AIG to open its "big book of business" and "show us the money!"

Cramer then aims his personal Outrage at the market "wizards" and know-it-alls -- you know, the ones you see crowing about how they saw this financial crisis coming and got out and, oh yeah, made a ton of money and are doing absolutely great, thank you very much.

To those smirking faces, this is what Cramer has to say: "Shut the heck up."

After all, "people are losing fortunes, their savings, their nest eggs, college tuition money, hard earned and hard to earn dollars in this stock market." Do these people -- or ANY honest, hard-working people -- need to hear that kind of smug, self-congratulatory crap? What happened to common decency and courtesy -- if not actual empathy?

As the market tanks:

Dow Could Hit 6,500

Expect a further 10%-15% drop in the Dow, predicts Ron Ianieri, chief markets strategist at Options University, adding that the index could slide to 6,500.

And there it goes...

Dow Jones Industrial Average

So. You CEOs who fly private jets to come and ask for more money... you morons who go to private spas and partridge shoots while on the taxpayer's dime... The party is over. And you guys are now accountable to us.

Where did the money go?

Because we want it back.

Update: Josh Marshall of TPM is making a list:

We're focusing today on Mack "MackDaddy" Whittle, longtime CEO of South Financial Group, who pushed up his retirement last month so he could cash out with a $18 million Golden Parachute just before sending his bank hat in hand to the Feds to get $347 million in choice Grade A Prime bailout money.

[snip]

But we also know Whittle isn't the only one who's pulled something like this. And we want to put together a list of everyone who has. It doesn't have to be precisely like this. Gazillion dollar corporate retreats while you've turned your company over to the Treasury Department's corporate ICU will do fine as well.

So let us know all the examples you can think of.

Late Update: Surprise, surprise -- turns out Whittle was a part of McCain's South Carolina finance team. And now a shareholder is suing him to cough up some of the loot.

It's our money you're spending now

So you corporate guys get to be accountable to us, right?:

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''

Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.

The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

``It's your money; it's not the Fed's money,'' said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. ``Of course there should be transparency.''

Hmmm. Okay, at least you'll rein in your profligate spending?:

AIG is hurting so bad that we just gave them another $40 billion, while execs live it up at another luxury junket, this one costing $343,000. KNVX uncovered another high-priced conference taking place at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix, AZ. They reported that AIG made efforts to disguise its presence, making sure no AIG iconography was out in the open. One hotel employee said that staff was forbidden from even saying the word AIG. AIG said seminars like this, which was for independent financial advisers who steer customers to AIG, are essential to its business. They also said that most of the seminar's costs would be picked up by other corporate sponsors. AIG said in a statement, "We take very seriously our commitment to aggressively manage meeting costs."

This 'conference' happened AFTER the pheasant shoot and the negative news AIG received from that. Slow learning curve or an incurable sense of entitlement?

A tin ear

And a thick skull:

American International Group Inc. spent $440,000 on a conference at a California resort less than a week after an $85 billion government takeover, lawmakers said.

The bill from the St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach included $23,380 for spa services, according to Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Waxman led questioning Tuesday of former AIG Chief Executive Officers Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad as Congress probes events that led to federal intervention.

"Average Americans are suffering economically," Waxman, a California Democrat, said in his opening statement. "Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation."

That's the TAXPAYERS' MONEY that you AIG guys are wasting with your unearned sense of entitlement. Americans own your company now, and we can dock your pay for this behavior.

Maybe we should fire your asses and sell your yachts so you can join the foreclosure crowd you helped create.

Update 10/9: Very interesting discussion about this 'perk' over at the Consumerist. (The comments are illuminating, be sure to note there are comments to the comments...)