Posted on 03/22/2009 1:42:24 PM PDT by kcvl
Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told CBS News’ Harry Smith on Face The Nation Sunday that the executive branch ought to use its leverage as a majority shareholder in AIG to sue the company for its wrongful use of retention bonuses.
Retention bonuses are to a great extent extortion, Frank argued. “I think there was an element, frankly, with some — not all of them — of almost extortion, where they said, 'We know what you need to know and we will quit if you don’t bribe us,'” Frank said.
He argued that there is a large pool of very talented people who have lost their jobs in the financial crisis and that AIG could replace the bonus recipients (some of whom are responsible for creating the firm's now-toxic assets) rather than bribe them with retention bonuses.
Frank said he did not agree at all with Chairman of Bank of America Kenneth Lewis’ assertion that the proposed taxation of bonuses for employees of companies receiving U.S. government bailout funds could “have the potential to damage the ability of the government to engineer a financial recovery.”
The congressman defended Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner saying that he inherited an economic fiasco.
“I know some of my Republican colleagues believe in creationism in which the world started 4,004 years ago. But I don’t think any of them want us to believe that it started on January 20, 2009,” Frank joked, arguing that the initial loans to AIG (totaling more than $173 billion) came from the Bush administration “without any Congressional input.”
Frank is a pain in the ass.
Up here further north we call it Massholechusetts. Does this answer your question?
Retention bonus are not extortion. When a company is in trouble and the are afraid that good employees will leave for other jobs because they will be offered a new job at a more stable company at the same or better pay (some times less in trade for the stability)they make an offer to the employee. If you stay for X period of time we will pay you your salary + Y (this can be done in increments). If the employee stays for the agree upon time they are paid the “bonus.” It’s a payment for risk. In Frank’s view the employees have to be forced to stay in their positions even if they want to leave. In his view apparently involuntary servitude is allowed. There is nothing the employee can be offered to stay longer and they also apparently can’t leave. You can tell he’s never been in the private sector. Well, except for the short time when his boyfriend was running the “escort service” out of Frank’s home. I’ll bet his boyfriend provided “escorts” for Barney’s friends and people who were lobbying him too.
Leave it to liberal idiots not to know the difference between “extortion” and “incentive.”
A real miracle would be seeing his fat, perverted posterior leveraged out of his seat!
Don’t he have some bugs to chase?
Extortion is what Frank does to us through taxation. Then he uses the money to buy votes for himself.
Ha! Is it extortion when the Treasury Department and the Congress okays it? I’m just wondering, because the Democrat members of Congress never do anything wrong, supposedly.
Barney Frank:
Individual extortion - bad.
Organized extortion - good.
And he’s supposed to be the “brightest” Democrat in congress...
what a smarmy asshat.
hey bahney, how goes the nambla pimp trade? reporting all the 'income' and any uncompensated 'benefits'?
i think his home needs to be camped by a busload of irate people demanding he pay back their losses
“What is wrong with the voters in Mass.?” They support the Kennedy Clan as well as Bawney. Obvious answer: Voters in Mass. are largely morons due to inbreeding.
It seems other than us here at FR and a relatively small percentage of the population, “no one” in general is upset at these things.
What makes it worse, is that the GOP has hole so wide in Obama’s armor that it could drive a fleet of trucks through, and other than Shelby and one or two others...silence.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
I just finished my taxes today. The IRS Code is extortion.
No Bawny...what you’re advocating IS extortion...that’s what putting a gun to a man’s head and relieving him of contractually derived earnings. My grand ancestors fought a war because of a king or two who could’nt keep their hands off of their subjects earnings. Sorry you regret signing the contract. As a taxpayer, I regret you signed the contract. But be grateful... contract law, if followed, will spare you from the king’s fate.
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