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We've covered both of these stories here, whether it's the "too big to jail" corrupt HSBC, or the out of touch greedy AIG, which was considering suing the taxpayers after they'd bailed them out. This Wednesday evening, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his turn going after them.

AIG decided not to join their former CEO "Hank" Greenberg's lawsuit against the government after all. I guess they took a look at those booming sales of pitchforks and torches and decided it might not bode well for them to do so.



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Bill Maher talks to Michael Moore about his movie, Capitalism a Love Story not being nominated for the Oscars this year, the lack of any regulation being passed since we bailed out the banks and health care reform.

(Warning, slightly nsfw.)



The Dylan Ratigan Show: SEC Protects AIG Documents

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Dylan Ratigan talks about the decision by Tim Geithner to keep details of the AIG bailout secret. More from Reuters--New emails show AIG mulled bank payment disclosures:

The New York Federal Reserve Bank actively worked with bailed out insurer AIG to build a case against disclosing details of AIG's payments to banks just days after the insurer considered making them public, documents released late on Saturday showed.

Lawyers for the Fed bank, which had taken over a pool of AIG assets as part of a $180 billion government bailout of the insurer in 2008, advised that AIG maintain a "confidential treatment request" from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to emails provided by Rep. Darrell Issa, a U.S. lawmaker probing the matter.

A separate batch of emails made public earlier this month showed that New York Fed had advised AIG not to disclose the payments in a securities filing in late 2008.

The email traffic has raised questions about the role of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who ran the New York Fed at the time of the AIG bailout and the insurer's payment of some $62.1 billion to banks to liquidate credit default swaps it had sold to them.

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From Charlie Rose on PBS, Andrew Ross Sorkin discusses his new book Too Big to Fail. I highly recommend watching the entire interview if you've got an hour to spare. Wall Street has not learned their lessons even after as Sorkin puts it "they saw the world was about to fall off of its axis".

Watch the full interview here. Transcript here.

ANDREW SORKIN: And part of the thing that’s so interesting about them is they really were thinking ahead. It’s remarkable, at least to me, a board meeting in

Moscow in June -- not in September, in June -- where they are talking...

CHARLIE ROSE: Goldman Sachs.

ANDREW SORKIN: A Goldman Sachs board meeting where they were talking about whether they need to become a bank holding company. Do they need deposits?

At one point they talk about whether they should buy -- are you ready for this -- AIG for the deposits, because they’re thinking if the future keeps going this direction where you need deposits and you need to be the equivalent of a bank holding company, maybe we should buy a company like that. Obviously it doesn’t go anywhere.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is there anything wrong with the fact that when AIG got all that TARP money they had to -- they paid out about $12, $13 billion to Goldman Sachs as a counterpart.

ANDREW SORKIN: I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time asking that question and tracing those two days. And I hope when you read it you really get to feel like you’re there and understand and appreciate what was going on.

And just to give it a little perspective, it really had happened now 24 hours after Lehman and Merrill had gone down, or Merrill had been sold to Bank of America.

The decision to give AIG $85 billion happened in the course of -- the first meeting was 8:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and by noon they decided to do it.

CHARLIE ROSE: Why did they do it?

ANDREW SORKIN: I think they saw the world was about to fall off of its axis. And, in fact, probably -- we were really quite close. And that would have been a very difficult decision.

Now, what they didn’t do was sit around the table, the conversation that we’ve had since then and say "Do you really need to pay out the full amounts to these banks? Could we give them a hair cut?"

CHARLIE ROSE: It was what, $40, $50 million?

ANDREW SORKIN: An extraordinary amount of money to banks throughout the world. And what if we’d gone into restructuring and said we’re not going to give you all this money? They didn’t have time to do that. They never really thought through that process. That never came up.

I mean, the funny and sad part about this entire book is many of the conversations -- the time, the amount of time that they are talking and thinking about these issues are much shorter than the amount of time we’ve been sitting and talking around this table now.

CHARLIE ROSE: How do you explain? Because they didn’t have time?

ANDREW SORKIN: There was no time. They were moving from meeting to meeting. They were running. They were racing. It really is -- it’s not a marathon, it’s a sprint. And they’re running out of their minds.

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Ring of Fire: The Corporate Takeover of America

Part 1

Part 2

From Ring of Fire and GoLeftTV, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Matt Taibbi on the bank bailout mess and the bipartisan blame for deregulation that led to the financial meltdown:

The stimulus packages and bailouts that the government has been a little too willing to hand over to our financial industries have not only given these giants more cash in their pockets, but they've also given these companies unprecedented power over our federal government. No other industry has been able to show up in Washington and get a blank check with no oversight, which really shows just who is in charge in our nation's capitol. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Air America's Ring of Fire talks about this shift in power with Rolling Stone political correspondent Matt Taibbi.



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David Shuster talks to Barney Frank about the AIG hearing today and the bonuses that the public is worked up over. Frank believes that we should bring a shareholders lawsuit to recover the money.

I'm not happy about AIG handing out these bonuses either but in the bigger scheme of things wonder how much of this is a distraction when compared to the billions that have been paid out to these companies that has not been accounted for. This gives the GOP something to howl over and pretend they care about taxpayers after eight years of them using our government as their feeding trough.



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From Countdown Jonathan Turley weighs in on the outrage over the AIG bonuses. Turley believes that it would be much easier to get the money back from AIG rather than the individuals who received the bonuses. He also notes where some the anger over this should be directed:

Turley: And I think part of the anger here really shouldn't be directed at AIG. We all knew what AIG was. The anger, and legitimately can be directed at Congress and both parties. I mean you have these members going around expressing complete shock. But you know when you give billions and billions of dollars to the Pirates of Penzance you can hardly be surprised if they, you know, spend it on women and grog.



h/t NewsPoliticsNews

Rachel talks to Congressman Barney Frank about the AIG bailout and what the plans are to address the bonuses that the public is rightly outraged over.



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Rachel Maddow takes on AIG for their latest waste of our tax payer dollars. Hiring P.R. firms to try to shore up their image with the people who bailed them out. Put some more lipstick on that pig AIG and everyone will feel better about you helping to tank the entire world's economy. Yeah! That's the ticket. Why didn't I think of that?

Rachel just gave me one more for the memory banks to slot under..why I despise union buster and over-paid consultant who helped Hillary waste tons of money to line his pockets by giving her bad advice and all the while giving John McCain his talking points for the election Mark Penn.