Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley have released the first draft of their proposal to discourage “excessive compensation” at companies that have taken taxpayer money. Companies will face an excise tax of 35 percent on retention bonuses and bonuses over $50,000. Individuals will face the same. Deferred compensation is capped at $1 million and heavily taxed […]
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is a former Prospect writer and current editor-in-chief at Vox. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Guardian, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Slate, and The Columbia Journalism Review. He’s been a commentator on MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and more.
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SURVIVAL STRATEGIES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS (AS TOLD TO THE NEW YORK TIMES).
The ratings agencies: Moody’s, meanwhile, believes the ratings system may need tinkering but it is not broken. The bankers: Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, has pointed out that in financial crises, bankers often exaggerate the difficulty of cleaning up their mess. They do so partly to justify their own […]
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HOW DANGERIOUS IS A MADMAN WITH AN AIG PASSWORD?
The AIG bonuses are not bonuses as we know them: Extra pay tied to superlative performance. They’ve got those, of course. But these bonuses are different. They’re “retention pay.” Rather than rewarding good market performance, they “guaranteed a minimum level of pay for both 2008 and 2009” in case the market tumbled. As compensation packages […]
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HOW FDR WOULD HANDLE AIG.
“We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses, which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers, if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” pleaded Edward Liddy, chairman of AIG. Putting aside the irony […]
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MATT DRUDGE RULES THEIR WORLD.
A few years ago, John Harris and Mark Halperin got in some trouble for admitting that “Matt Drudge rules our world.” This was a little too much truth for most, and they took a lot of heat for it. But state it more basically and most bloggers can sympathize: Links rule their world. And stories […]
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HOW CAP AND TRADE CAN HELP THE POOR. OR HURT THEM.
By now, readers of this blog are among the privileged elite know that there are many ways of structuring a cap and trade plan. You can auction the carbon permits to corporations and use the revenues to give people a tax break. Or you can use the revenues to give corporations a tax break. Or […]
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SENATE: AIG HAS 48 HOURS TO GIVE BACK THE GODDAMN MONEY.
If you’re wondering why we didn’t let AIG fail, Felix Salmon explains it slowly and clearly and argues that we really didn’t bail out AIG: We bailed out the Credit Default Swap market and used AIG as our point of entry. “It was quite an elegant solution, in its way,” says Salmon. “Rather than trying […]
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FOREIGN AID THROUGH BAILOUTS.
Jay Leno unleashed a righteous rant against AIG last night. “It turns out they gave $35 billion — not million, $35 billion — of our money to bail out European banks,” he raged. “See, this is how a global economy works. Our hard-earned tax dollars are used to bail out German banks for making bad […]
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ACCESS WITHOUT AFFORDABILITY. OR, FOR THAT MATTER, ACCESS.
Senator Jay Rockefeller and Congressman Joe Courtney held a conference call today to announce the introduction of the Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act. The bill’s title is largely its content. It restricts insurers from refusing to cover pre-existing conditions. This is, sadly, a common trap in the insurance market. Low-cost plans often lay down some […]
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THE AIG BAILOUT VERSUS THE AUTO BAILOUT.
The administration was pretty clearly caught off-guard by the AIG bonuses. “We didn’t anticipate this problem when we structured the rescue for AIG,” says one official. “In negotiating it, we should have made very clear that if they want this money we have to reopen the contracts. We did that with others.” What others? Think […]
