Call To "Open Source" AIG Investigation 259
VValdo writes "As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened, exactly. That may change. In a new op-ed piece, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force AIG to release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to 'break free' of our control. As the prosecutors put it, 'By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story.' Good idea?"
Keep Dreaming (Score:4, Informative)
If gov funded research has to be published why not (Score:3, Informative)
Of COURSE it's a good idea (Score:5, Informative)
As many accountants have said: Show me a company who does not get audited, and I will show you fraud.
There are only two options here:
Option1: We the People get ripped off.
Option2: We the People are allowed to see exactly where OUR money went.
All other options are Option 1 in disguise.
Not quite (Score:3, Informative)
Being 80% owned does not integrate a corporation into the entity that owns it. Trust me, Verizon has been using the exact theory for decades to lock Verizon Wireless workers out of the main Verizon company's collective bargaining agreement. Also, ask the Rigases (who owned Adelphia) if full ownership entitles you to complete run of the company -- it can be a jailable offense if you go about owning the company you own to aggressively.
A stockholder company has a wide range of fiduciary issues. It's very likely that if the government, as 80% owner, tried to force corporate secrets into the open that the other 20% could sue them for abandoning their responsibility to the company.
Re:No (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the dicing up will limit the power of individual banks.
However, you are correct that the problem was that EVERYBODY was acting stupid. The problem is that when all your competitors are making risky loans and selling them to investors as safe loans you have two choices:
1. Do the same thing.
2. Watch all the investors pull out all of their money and give it to those who do #1.
After all, if you're an investor, which fund would you invest in? The AAA bond fund yielding 15%, or the AAA bond fund yielding 5%?
A big problem is that individual investors are far too insulated from the investment decisions. Most people have a choice of maybe 20 mutual funds in their 401k - usually from one or two investment houses. At best they get a quarterly statement and some audits. Nobody really works for the individual investor in such a setup - the funds make their pitches to their employers. People are told to just set aside 10% of their income and watch it grow, and that investments are too complicated for them to deal with. Nobody is accountable when things go wrong.
The free market only works when consumers can make educated choices. That is why there was a ton of regulation after the 1929 crash.
Audit the --- FED --- FIRST!! (Score:3, Informative)
And here's the way it'll happen:
Support Ron Paul's bill http://www.auditthefed.com/ [auditthefed.com] and http://www.campaignforliberty.com/ [campaignforliberty.com]
Why audit smalltime thieves when we could be coming after the GREATEST financial criminals this far into human history!!!
They stole trillions from us and wont tell us what they did with the money.
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will this be like the CRU emails? (Score:5, Informative)
Another Zeitgeist victim. Here's a tip; read a book on basic finance. Better yet, just read a book. Any book. The Great Crash. Animal Farm. I don't care. Stop getting your information from YouTube and the odd polemical internet site.
Every single one of the arguments applied to "fiat money" can be just as easily applied to supposed "hard currencies" like gold. Remember, when gold or platinum or what have you is mined out of the ground, from a currency standpoint, that's exactly equivalent to some new dollar bills being printed. Dollars, euros and yen are worth money because they are (relatively) rare. It has sweet FA to do with debt. The circulation money has nothing to do with debt levels. Debt is not "created" by printing bills or mining metals. Debt is created when people spend more than they earn; which is what western society has been doing economically for 20 or more years. We'd be in debt if we used fiat money, the bren-whatever gold muck-about, or else just traded in bottlecaps.
And brainless fools require someone to pre-digest their information into a pseudo-intellectual web-video so it can be masticated into their waiting mouths. Learn to chew.
What we really need... (Score:3, Informative)
What we really need is a giant freaking RESET button. Everybody's debt and credit is now at 0. You have what you have, start over. And be smarter this time.
Re:Yes? (Score:1, Informative)
Understand that before anyone had HEARD "AIG" there were problems. The Fed made deals with AIG, who, like a lot of people, pays their high-fliers with bonuses at the end of the year, rather than weekly.
Imagine that. Getting paid ONLY once a year. Once a month is hard enough. But this kinda of thing is required, due to congressional interferance. (The kind that makes Conservatives' blood boil, btw).
That would suck, if it were in any way how things worked. Even if your claim were true (that they only got paid once a year), the bonuses they were receiving were absurdly large (much larger than 95% of the population makes in a year).
Being that it isn't true, however, these are bonuses that they earn on top of their existing salary (which they tended to place at actually moderate levels, as I recall, so that they didn't look like they were screwing us out of so much money when their salaries were reported to various governing bodies), so they had plenty of money each month to get by.
Stop being a nutter, seriously.