Needlenose

The Repugs, riding the wave of public indignation, are having a field day with the AIG executive retention bonus crap.  And why shouldn’t they?  It was a Dem legislature that stripped out the provision to cap the bonuses of firms getting Federal bailouts to keep afloat?

I mean, $163 Million sure is a lot of money, right?

Well the public should get a sense of perspective, and call the Repugs out for their feigned amnesia – I mean where the fuck was all the ‘indignation’ when goddman Shrubya & the Repug Congress of the day lost $12 Billion in the ” biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve” in a ‘rebuild Iraq’ program that had Zero oversight and accountability?

It’s time for a reality check here – that is 2 orders of magnitude larger than when the Dems just pooch-screwed away, and what’s more – at least we know where the $163 Million ended up (and we might be able to get it back through a special tax)!!  The $12 Billion just vanished without a trace.

And that’s not including another $10 Billion spent on no-bid contracts with unenforced oversight handed out to Shrubya cronies on “questionable or unsupported charges in Iraq reconstruction contracts.”

There are days when I believe they put funny pills in the American drinking water supply.  Seriously.

Pondering the Federal Reserve’s acquisition of controlling interest in AIG, the mega-insurer, close on the heels of the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Matt Yglesias opines:

I hadn’t really ever thought that the Bush administration was going to wind up giving us the large scale nationalization of industry, but I’m not sure what else you call it. . . . With the auto industry also clamoring for bailouts, we’re perhaps moving in the direction of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, in which a market economy exists on small scales while the state controls the “commanding heights” of heavy industry and finance.