Thursday, January 10, 2013

Day Four: Is the Big F.U. Unamerican? Or is Today's Winner?

I'd like to start today's blog with a sincere and heartfelt thank you. Thank you to all my new twitter followers. Thank you to all my new, and current, readers. Thank you for all the kind words I received yesterday. I want to thank all of you who are referring friends and family to my blog, especially Tonya (@TinkerbellT421), who is going above and beyond anything I could have asked for. I also want to give a special thank you to Ms. Evan Rachel Wood for her Twitter comments regarding the subject of yesterday's blog. Ms. Wood, I am honored you took time out of your day not only to read my post but to link it in Twitter and comment as well. @evanrachelwood Thank you!

I also want to give a shout out to a new friend: Leah. She found my blog yesterday, and in turn, i found hers. I recommend her blog to my readers and followers. Check out her blog: littleleah at: http://littleleah78.wordpress.com/. You can find Leah on Twitter at @littleleah78. Read and subscribe to her blog. It is great. Keep up the good work Leah!

Last night, as I watched Nashville (geez, isn't Hayden Panettiere brilliant? Gorgeous? Extremely talented?), I was scrolling my list of potential F.U. award winners, and I just couldn't decide who to choose. So, I picked up my local newspaper (yes, people still do read these things) for some inspiration. And I was not disappointed. Lo and behold, I was inspired.

Let's go back to the year 2008. The United States economy was in the tank. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost monthly. Companies on the verge of bankruptcy, especially financial firms. In October of that year, then president George W. Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, otherwise known as TARP. The basic idea of TARP was the U.S. government would purchase assets and equity from the troubled financial institutions. The belief was the injection of funds would strengthen the sector as a whole. The companies would be responsible for repaying any loan obtained. And yes, this is a little different from the auto bailout, which came later.

Some debate whether TARP worked as planned or not. We are not going to have that debate. I'll defer to the pundits, politicians (though they can never be trusted), and experts on that topic. Instead, today, I am taking on one of the companies who received TARP money or else risked collapsing.

American International Group, or AIG, gladly accepted taxpayer funded TARP money, totaling $122.3 billion. The money, no doubt, saved the company from going under.

The United States even made a nice profit from bailing out AIG. In August 2012, the federal government sold off the remaining AIG shares and raked in a hefty $17.7 billion profit. In total, the U.S. government made about $22 billion from this bail out.

AIG has been running television ads thanking the American taxpayer for the much appreciated bail out. The ad even mentions how the taxpayer made $22 billion from the investment. Funny, I didn't receive any money. Where is my check? Anyway, apparently everyone was happy. Right? Um, no.

News reports surfaced on Wednesday, January 9, 2013, that AIG was considering joining a $25 billion lawsuit against the very government (and by extension, the U.S. citizen/taxpayer) that saved the company from a shut down. How is that for a THANK YOU AMERICA?

As of this writing, the AIG Board were meeting to determine if they would join the lawsuit or not.

This action by AIG is disgusting. Totally ungrateful. And the rich and power wonder why they are despised and hated? It is actions of greed, such as this, that make people hate you. No, believe it or not, it isn't jealousy, like you want to believe. You aren't IMPORTANT to an of us. Not at all. Your greedy, selfish ways make us hate your guts.

I do have one thing to say to the Board members: remember, if it weren't for the taxpayers' money, AIG would be history today. Going down as a financial failure, bankrupt. Kaput. Perhaps we should have let AIG fail. We probably should have let them all fail. Too big to fail? Give me a break. Again, I'm not here to discuss the merits of whether the economy would have collapsed even further if the big banks died. I'll leave that to the so-called experts too.

Next time, maybe we should let AIG fail. Hopefully there isn't a next time though. And even if AIG does not join the lawsuit, the mere fact they are THINKING about it is enough of a slap in the face of the U.S. taxpayer.

So, readers, you know what time it is. AIG wants to give us the middle finger? Well, we'll give AIG the middle finger back. So congratulations, AIG Board members, you receive today's Big F.U.


Here is a little piece of advice: See that finger? Sit and rotate!

***You can follow me on Twitter at @FuzzyUrlachter or find us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/DailyDoseOfTheBigFu. Just click the links on the side of this blog.

EDIT: news has come out late last night that the AIG Board has decided not to pursue joining the lawsuit. Well, isn't that special. Sorry, Board of Directors. Damage done. Contemplating is enough to show us your true colors. Award stands.


No comments:

Post a Comment