{"id":3020,"date":"2009-03-16T16:48:27","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T21:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3020"},"modified":"2009-03-16T16:48:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T21:48:27","slug":"journalistic-interpretive-inertia-beyond-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/16\/journalistic-interpretive-inertia-beyond-spin\/","title":{"rendered":"journalistic interpretive inertia<\/em> [beyond spin]…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Obama Orders Treasury Chief to Try to Block A.I.G. Bonuses <\/strong><\/a>

By HELENE COOPER
March 16, 2009<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

President Obama on Monday vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Later in the day, a White House official disclosed that the administration would use a pending $30 billion installment for A.I.G. to recoup the $165 million in retention payments to A.I.G. employees in the business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
“Treasury will be using this facility to address the excessive retention payments made to the A.I.G. Financial Products employees, which Treasury found to be completely unacceptable given that A.I.G. is already surviving on taxpayer funds,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Treasury will be adding provisions to its new facility aimed at making taxpayers whole for the amounts of the offensive payments”…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I hardly need to comment on A.I.G.<\/strong>‘s bonuses. I heard about it at the lunch counter of a local truck stop at noon. I heard about it from the Republican Commissioner of our rural Georgia county this afternoon. I’ll bet you would hear about it in Bratislava, Slovokia [if you understood the language – "blah blah AIG<\/strong> blah blah!"]. But I do want to comment on the Press.<\/div>\n

I think there must be such a thing as journalistic interpretive inertia<\/strong><\/em> [a term I just invented a few minutes ago]. This article gives, "… the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda" as the reason for Obama’s action. I’m sure he’d like to avert backlash, but there’s another reason for Obama to act that might more important. It’s the right thing to do as our President<\/strong><\/font>. Over the last eight years, we’ve gotten so used to political strategizing ["spin"] being the only motive on the table, we’ve lost sight of the fact that the President is the elected voice of the people – elected to represent our collective will – someone who is on our side.<\/p>\n

So how about this? "President Obama, representing the will of the American people, pledged to use the power of our<\/u> Presidency to stop AIG from distributing our<\/u> bail-out money to their <\/u>executives.<\/strong><\/font>" <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama Orders Treasury Chief to Try to Block A.I.G. Bonuses By HELENE COOPER March 16, 2009 President Obama on Monday vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}