Congress is like the Beltway. Sometimes it’s impassible gridlock; so slow that nothing seems to move at all. Other times... View Article
Continue readingRead the Bill: Stimulus Bill and Bonus Loopholes
Last night Sen. Chris Dodd admitted on CNN that he was responsible, under administration pressure, for language in the final... View Article
Continue readingDodd did it
Senate channels “Not Me”
Maybe we should make members pass a quiz on the contents of bills before they're allowed to vote. Case in point: the bonus exemption in the Stimulus Bill that AIG executives took advantage of. Where it came from and how it got into the bill is a mystery:
In an interview with CNN, Dodd denied inserting that exemption at the 11th hour, and insisted he doesn't know how it got there."When I wrote the language there was no such language like that," Dodd told CNN Tuesday.
Multiple Senate Democratic leadership sources also deny knowing how the exemption ...
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Sleuthing the Stimulus’ bonus provision
So maybe Dodd's not to blame for the AIG bonus furor. Jane Hamsher uses OpenCongress.org to compare versions of the bill -- Donnie Shaw explains how here. Hamsher concludes:
So -- in the end, all compensation limits only applied to contracts written after February 11, at the specific request of Timothy Geithner, and AIG was able to pay out $286 million in bonuses on Sunday.It's impossible to know how many of those bonuses would have been covered by Dodd's original language without examining the individual contracts. What is certain, however, is that the loophole regarding "retroactivity" which ...
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Don’t mean…
to keep picking on Dodd, but he does seem to be in the center of quite a lot of things lately:
While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009 -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.The amendment made it into the final version of the bill, and is law.
Separately, Sen. Dodd was AIG's largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle ...
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Foreign Lobbying Around Bailout?
Recent news stories have shown that the U.S. is increasingly in the business of providing loans and bailout money to... View Article
Continue readingThe Transparency Principle in Our Crisis World
As the bailouts mount serious questions remain about the future formation of the economy and the government. These questions revolve... View Article
Continue readingDodd, Shelby Call on Release of Counterparty Names
Following calls from their fellow senators, Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd and Ranking Member Richard Shelby slammed the Federal Reserve... View Article
Continue readingAIG Bailout Shrouded in Secrecy, But Still Playing PR Games
I think that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke spoke for all Americans when he testified yesterday that the one thing that... View Article
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