Bank executives will be getting bonuses

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Two days ago on C-Span they seemed to congratulate the bigwigs of the financial companies who got BILLIONS in BONUSES. They ran down the list of those that were being questioned and how much they received. It's absolutely sickening. I had to turn it off.

The White House on Friday threw its support behind a plan to speed release of $25 billion in existing loans to the Big Three automakers but rejected a Democratic proposal to use money from a financial bailout to help the troubled industry.

The $700 billion financial rescue package was never intended to help automakers and shouldn't be now, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told The Associated Press. But since Democratic leaders in Congress are pressing forward with a proposal to carve out a piece of its for the auto industry, she said the White House has decided to pursue a different approach: accelerating the availability of federal loans Congress first approved in September.

Those loans were approved to help automakers build more fuel-efficient vehicles and become more competitive companies in the global marketplace. The administration now supports allowing the loans to be released more quickly than the original legislation prescribed and to be used for more urgent purposes as the companies struggle to stay afloat.

"Democrats are choosing a path that would only lead to partisan gridlock," she said. "We are now actively calling on Congress to amend the loan program."

My boyfriend is drawing Workmans Compensation. They are wanting to settle his case. The "negotiation" amounts were at about $130,000 settlement last fall when he found out he had to have another surgery and they put him on hold. Now, they are negotiating again, but can only $75,000 because the company does not have funds to pay anymore. Guess who the company is -

but trying to get that money back which might be impossible. For the first time in my life, I agreed with Barney!!!

Gee, wonder if Barney is going to receive some of that payout and just trying to throw everyone off the track. After all, he, Pelosi, and Reid were the ones who put this stupid bailout together, and without thinking about it, either. Real smart on their part.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/wall-street-bonuses-expects-come-season-despite-bailout/

Paying bonuses this year is likely to result in a lot of backlash from the average American. After all, even with bonuses down dramatically, they are still higher than the average American, who is losing his or her home, makes. Not to mention the government bailout of financial firms, which seems to change daily, is coming from taxpayer dollars. Concerns abound�rightly or wrongly--that some of the $700 billion bailout could go to pay bonuses this year.

WASHINGTON -- The chief executive officer of failed insurance conglomerate AIG told lawmakers Wednesday that he has asked executives to give back at least half of their bonuses.

Edward Libby, chairman and CEO of the American International Group, said that some workers there already have volunteered to return the money.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/18/aig-chairman-faces-congressional-grilling-bonuses/

I don't want a check either but wouldn't be nice if they would give us the money instead of coming up with all these carppy bogged down packages?

What would you do if they would give us $30K or more? That would probably cost less than what they are proposing and you know darn well, that money would go into the economy faster than their plan.

WASHINGTON (AFP) �� The US Federal Reserve said Monday it had authorized China Construction Bank, a leading Chinese state bank, to operate in the United States.

The proposed New York City branch of CCB "would engage in wholesale deposit-taking, lending, trade finance, and other banking services," the Fed said in a statement.

The US central bank recalled that China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) is 57.0 percent owned by the Chinese state, 19.7 percent by US banking group Bank of America and 5.7 percent by Temasek Holdings, a sovereign wealth fund owned by the government of Singapore. The remainder of the capital is publicly traded.

CCB is the second-largest bank in China, with total assets of approximately 1.1 trillion dollars, it noted.

The Fed said it had determined that CCB had adequate anti-money laundering safeguards and had committed to respect US laws on money laundering.

CCB's own funds exceed the minimum set by the 1998 Basel Capital Accord and "is considered equivalent to capital that would be required of a US banking organization," the US central bank said.

CCB would be the fourth mainland Chinese bank -- excluding banks in Hong Kong -- to open operations in the US, after the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's top bank, also has asked the Fed for authorization to open a branch in New York.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081208/pl_afp/uschinabankregulatebankingcompanyccb

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan has come out in favor of nationalizing some banks. (Photo: Reuters Pictures)

The US government may have to nationalise some banks on a temporary basis to fix the financial system and restore the flow of credit, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has told the Financial Times.

In an interview, Mr Greenspan, who for decades was regarded as the high priest of laisser-faire capitalism, said nationalisation could be the least bad option left for policymakers.

"It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring," he said. "I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do."

Mr Greenspan's comments capped a frenetic day in which policymakers across the political spectrum appeared to be moving towards accepting some form of bank nationalisation.

"We should be focusing on what works," Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, told the FT. "We cannot keep pouring good money after bad." He added, "If nationalisation is what works, then we should do it."

Speaking to the FT ahead of a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, Mr Greenspan said that "in some cases, the least bad solution is for the government to take temporary control" of troubled banks either through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or some other mechanism.

The former Fed chairman said temporary government ownership would "allow the government to transfer toxic assets to a bad bank without the problem of how to price them."

But he cautioned that holders of senior debt - bonds that would be paid off before other claims - might have to be protected even in the event of nationalisation.

"You would have to be very careful about imposing any loss on senior creditors of any bank taken under government control because it could impact the senior debt of all other banks," he said. "This is a credit crisis and it is essential to preserve an anchor for the financing of the system. That anchor is the senior debt."

Mr Greenspan's comments came as President Barack Obama signed into law the $787bn fiscal stimulus in Denver, Colorado. Mr Obama will announce on Wednesday a $50bn programme for home foreclosure relief in Phoenix, Arizona. Meanwhile, the White House was working last night on the latest phase of the bailout for two of the big three US carmakers.

In his speech after signing the stimulus, which he called the "most sweeping recovery package in our history", Mr Obama set out a vertiginous timetable of federal decisions in the coming weeks that included fixing the US banking system, submission next week of the 2009 budget and a bipartisan White House meeting to address longer-term fiscal discipline.

"We need to end a culture where we ignore problems until they become full-blown crises," said Mr Obama. "Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles� but it does mark the beginning of the end."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail.

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that everything changed after 9/11 thing.

But not Walter.

We're a product of the '60s, he said. We believe government should be way away from us in that regard.

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

When you mess with my money, I want to know why, he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

The more I'm on, the scarier it gets, he said. It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy.

Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.

But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to others, he said.

(Bob Kerr is a columnist for The Providence Journal. E-mail bkerr@projo.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)

This again from the McClatchy news group, which is not conservative by any means: