"Am I therefore become your enemy,because I TELL YOU THE TRUTH...?"
(Galatians 4:16)

Washington struggles to contain AIG firestorm

The US administration and lawmakers scrambled Tuesday for ways to recoup employee bonuses awarded by rescued insurer AIG as President Barack Obama grappled to douse a political firestorm.The controversy engulfing bailed-out American International Group threatened to turn nasty amid reports of death threats against AIG workers, as US networks and newspapers were inundated with expressions of rage from the public."Americans are angry, I am angry: 4.5 million Americans have lost their jobs, and these people are getting bonuses, multi-million-dollar bonuses," said Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, a Democrat.Despite Obama's vow Monday to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses," the administration has struggled to explain how it can do that without tearing up iron-clad contracts awarded last year to the AIG recipients.Baucus said he was looking at possible tax mechanisms to reclaim 165 million dollars in bonuses paid largely to the same London-based traders who brought ruin to AIG and helped to ignite the global financial crisis.Republicans turned up the political heat on Obama, who must tread a fine line between riding the public fury against Wall Street excess without eroding congressional support for forthcoming measures to prop up tottering banks.John Boehner, the minority leader in the House of Representatives, noted that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had two weeks ago expressed confidence that taxpayer money given to AIG was being well spent."Well clearly, they didn't know what they were talking about," he said."I think this is outrageous, and I think the American people are rightly outraged that their tax money is going to pay bonuses to the very people that got this company in trouble."Gibbs said Monday that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is looking at recouping the bonus money out of his latest 30-billion-dollar infusion for AIG, which has taken the insurer's total bailout to 180 billion.But the bonuses themselves have already been paid out, according to New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo,who Monday issued subpoenas after AIG bosses ignored an afternoon deadline to divulge details of the payments.Lawmakers from both sides are warning Obama that the row will only make it harder for the administration to hustle new rescue measures through Congress as Geithner readies a plan to clean out US banks' bad debts...

As in the days of Noah...