Dodd and AIG Scratch Each Other's Back

The Hartford Currant has documented Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd's flip-flop on the AIG bonuses, but it seems that there is more going on than he's addressed.

On Tuesday, Dodd said that he was not a member of the conference committee that crafted the final compromise bill and said that the exception had not been in the bill as he drafted it.

But late Wednesday, Dodd admitted in an interview with CNN that he had been involved in the change.

"I agreed reluctantly," Dodd said. "I was changing the amendment because others were insistent."

Don't think that Dodd is at an arm's length relationship with the financial services conglomerate. If you check the record of donations to him, you quickly see that AIG was his fourth largest contributor from 2003 to 2008, with a total of $223,478 donated.

The total money he raised during that time was $8,938,003. That means that AIG was directly responsible for 2.5 percent of all the money he raised during that period. The insurance industry was one of his top five industry donors with a total of $1,440,422, making AIG responsible for 15.5 percent of all insurance company donations to Dodd.

It's not surprising that Dodd has close ties to financial services as he's chair of the Senate's Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. This is clearer when you add the total of campaign money received from 2003 to 2008 from securities and investments, insurance, and commercial banks: $6,588,012, or 73.7 percent of all campaign contributions to the senator.

It's not that the money comes directly from the companies, because that would violate election laws. However, 71% of the money comes from individuals; organizations like OpenSecrets.org collect the public information and then cross reference to find the totals. It seems pretty hard to believe that Dodd's own office wouldn't have made the same calculations.

GM Tries Hiding Plane

The big three auto makers received scathing publicity when they used private jets to travel to Washington, D.C. so they could ask Congress for a public bailout of their companies, driven to the brink of fiscal death by inept management.

Representatives at the Nov. 19 House hearing, including Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, faulted Mr. Wagoner; Alan R. Mulally, the Ford Motor chief; and Robert L. Nardelli, the chief of Chrysler, for taking private jets to Washington to plead their case.

“Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class?” Mr. Ackerman asked.

Critics of a federal aid package for G.M., Ford and Chrysler spotlighted the private jets as an example of why the companies did not deserve a bailout.

To keep such wasteful and arrogant activity from hitting the public spotlight happening again, General Motors for one decided to ... block the public's ability to track a plane it uses. Good lord, these people really will never learn, will they? Any bets on what they would do with bailout money? Do I hear waste it?

Bailout: Just the Beginning

Ah, should have known this was going to happen. According to the Financial Times, all sorts of people are pressuing the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve to provide further help to the economy, possibly a mix of a rate cut, letting money markets borrow money to fund their holdings, and maybe even offering unsecured loans to regulated banks. In other words, the U.S. government is going to become like a parent who always bails out the troubled child until things get so bad that it's no longer possible. I'm sure some would liken the current situation to the intervention of a doctor, but unfortunately the illness was the result of the stupidity of the institutions in danger. How is curing the symptoms going to change the underlying behavior? It's not, and chances are that the cash is not going to travel much farther than the banks and their largest customers - the ones they want to keep happy. I'm already hearing stories from small business owners suddenly finding their credit lines pulled. Many will make it through, but when you remember that the majority of employment in the country comes from small businesses, it makes you wonder whether it's the economy that's getting a bailout, or the most elite piece.