RE: AIG, White House and bonuses.

“I didn’t know the iceberg was there!” is an excuse that can be used by snipes and deck apes, but not by the cappie. Cappie ‘sposed to be on top of this shit. Dodd and Geithner will eventually go, though I do not think Geithner is getting a fair shake, working in an office shamefully empty of senior support staff. (There’s another big Why that needs to be asked. “Cappie?”) But he’ll fall on the sword, because someone has to. Senator Dodd has nice suits, but they’ve been on camera twice too much the last two days.  And his position as Numero Uno on AIG’s political donations recipient list (which looks worse than it actually is, but this is all about the looks) will help to further wrinkle his threads. And off in the not-so-distant distance, the “fail” section will make sure this all happens, because that’s what it’s all about. An intern and stained dress so soon! Amazing. But it’s politics, right? It’s always about the next election.

In reality all this bonus stuff is mostly fluff, but it’s become the reification of all we don’t know and can’t seem to ever understand about the financial labyrinth(s), where all the money always gets lost, eventually ending up in the hands of those who already have plenty of it. The AIG bonus business is not the ‘evil.’ It’s just its feeble reflection. The Real One is still on the prowl, and we’ll never get a chance to ever see it. Then again, we can always ask Rush, who supports the bonuses. I’m sure he knows. He’s on the payroll. But, of course, he’s not telling. He’s too busy running a party.

Mr Zappa dropped the above quote at a concert in 1988 on the day it was announced that Jimmy “Only the Tip” Swaggart, the preaching Louisianan, was under investigation for consorting with a prostitute. It was part of Zappa’s lead-in to his tune “Stinkfoot” or, podobromidrosis, the official medical name for smelly feet. The “everyone” refers to the scourge of televangelists that were running loose at the time. Since then, many of them have been caught, thrown into jail, lost their ministries for a laundry list of crimes, mostly having to do with sex and money, the usual fundie Christian predatory stuff.

So today while browsing the AIG’s Employees’ Code of Conduct I came upon the following text box on page 5. (The bolded words are theirs, not mine. They obviously had a hard time reading it, ergo the emphasis.) For a poignant example of highly devalued language, I’ve re-written word-for-word The Headline Test. Clearly everyone at AIG skipped over the particulars.

The Headline Test
For making better decisions
•    Is it Legal?
•    Is it consistent with AIG’s Values and Policies?
•    Is it Appropriate and Honest?
•    How would my actions be perceived if they appeared in the Newspaper?

Surprise! Newspaper time! Edward Liddy and everyone who took a bonus, is, at the very least, guilty of paying absolutely no attention to the Headline Test and, by extension, the rest of the twenty-one pages of AIG’s Code of Conduct, though the final page is a signatured acknowledgment sheet, which, I imagine everyone signed, including  Mr. “My Hands Are Tied” Liddy.

Stinks, doesn’t it? Just wait until they take off their shoes!
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AIG’s Employees’ Code of Conduct (available in 26 tongues)

If somehow you’ve missed the Stewart vs. CNBC brawl, go to the Daily Show and watch for several days in the lead up to the bumbling Cramer interview. Or just Google it. It’s everywhere, as well it should be, but not for how the news folks are spinning it. Joe Scarborough of “Morning Joe” was particularly lame and off the mark, and he showed just how far off when he whipped up the hapless Jim Cramer, a minor off-the-bench player, into believing that he was their Goliath. But Stewart didn’t slay him, since that wasn’t the point. He wounded him pretty badly but stopped short of cutting his throat and watching him bleed out on camera.

AIG is on deck, and I can only hope that Stewart will do to them what he has done to CNBC. Or maybe, just maybe, CNBC and most other mainstream news orgs will have the stones to side with the people instead of their corporate bosses and sponsors this time around. (I know, I’m dreaming.) The list of recipients of the AIG “rewards for colossal failure” bonus package will eventually become public, by hook or by crook, and those who are on it will be outed. Then things will get very dangerous. The AIG folks have but one realistic choice: publicly renounce the bonuses and just walk away. Will they do that? It’s money, and reason rarely prevails when one-eyed greed is running the show. This may very well lead to large-scale problems that will not be able to be adequately addressed by Comedy Central.

Today I read a suggestion for a “million taxpayer march” on Wall Street. That might be something that would finally get me to travel back to the US., though, realistically a mass rally on what has become known as the center of unimaginable corruption would probably lead to mass violence. The NYT is reporting that the Obama White House is concerned about a populist backlash:

“We’ve got enormous problems that need to be addressed,” David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said in an interview. “And it’s hard to address because there’s a lot of anger about the irresponsibility that led us to this point.”

Perhaps that is what Washington finally needs. Now we’ll find out what Obama is really made of, if he has the qualities to become one of the elites. This is looking more and more like his metaphoric 9/11. He’s in the middle of a much larger minefield than he was at the end of last week, and where and how he treads will determine who will follow. This one is not a joke.