Why is CNBC is so angry about the thought of Wall Street bonuses being repealed?

[ClassAct]

http://dailybail.com/home/cnbc-congressional-bonus-debate-the-sherminator-kicks-some-w.html

check this video out.

These CNBC presenters are grilling the U.S. congressman about the possibility that Wall Street execs whose banks accepted bailout money, might have to pay back the bonuses they have given out since that point.

Shouldn't CNBC be on the side of the taxpayers?

 

[iluvbtca]

Taxpayers don't pay for advertising. The companies of those undeserving Wall Street execs do.

 

[Rockslinger]

These AIG execs are cut from the same cloth as Madoff. They (AIG execs) signed CDS contracts with no intention of ever honouring them. This is fraud.
They should all be in jail (just like Madoff) and forced to make restitution for the $$billions they caused AIG and the taxpayers as well as forfeiture of their ill gotten gains (salaries and bonuses etc.).

Heard on the radio this morning that there is a protest march to the AIG execs' multi-million dollar homes in Connecticut to-day or tomorrow. Shades of the French Revolution when the peasants rose up and overthrew the nobility?

 

[WoodPeckr]

Shouldn't CNBC be on the side of the taxpayers?

LOL!!!
Just look at who owns them!
It ain't the taxpayers....

 

[S.C. Joe]

The tax is just for 2009, all those bonuses that were paid out for X-mas 2008 are not being tax. Even thou Bank of America--which brought Merrill Lynch--received 45 billion of TAXPAYERS money back in 2008.

That bailout money was to keep the businesses out of bankruptcy, not to reward employees who created this mess in the first place.

The law has yet to be pass, Obama today said he is has some doubts about it. We have to wait and see what really happens.

Any business who received 5 billion or more in bailout money would be subject to this tax...its not for the companies--like the oil companies-who were by looking at the price of oil today-were ripping you, me, everybody off last year. Just the companies that are using TAXPAYERS money to stay afloat.

Why should taxpayers be paying muti millions in bonuses to the employees who cause the companies to need public WELFARE...that what it is.

By the way, I was against this bailout from day one, let them all go bankrupt...and forget taxing bailout bonuses, that is the real American way.

 

[wangbang]

CNBC is virtually run by the brokerages and banks of Wall Street and a high majority of the CNBC staffers are ex-employees of Wall Street firms.

 

[xdog]

The lawmakers screwed up when they began these bailouts. Rather than accepting responsibility, they are trying to collect tax retroactively. All taxpayers should now be more afraid if this is allowed to happen,

x

 

[Rockslinger]

We are focussing too much on the bonuses and not nearly enough on the real crime. The real crime is a massive 3 trillion dollar fraud. These AIG execs signed CDS (3 trillion dollars) that they had no intention of ever honouring. This is no different than what Madoff did.

 

[FOOTSNIFFER]

We are focussing too much on the bonuses and not nearly enough on the real crime. The real crime is a massive 3 trillion dollar fraud. These AIG execs signed CDS (3 trillion dollars) that they had no intention of ever honouring. This is no different than what Madoff did.

If you think that's 'fraud', then you must feel that most of the financial system is just one big fraud, for that is pretty much what they do in a fractional reserve system. The regulators also allowed the insurance companies like AIG to underprovision for the risks taken in the Credit Default Swaps ;market....why weren't they more vigilant in minimizing systemic risk with more reserves?

 

[joker12]

Its pretty scary that the govenrment can just decide to implement a tax on whoever it feels like. That's getting close to communism. If someone makes too much money, the governemnt will just take it away.

also, these people were entiled to the bonuses based on their employment contracts. If you know how wall street works, compensation doesn't come in the form of salary. Almost all of their compensation comes at year end. You can't lay all the blame on the executives that the economy went south.

 

[BottomsUp]

These AIG execs are cut from the same cloth as Madoff. They (AIG execs) signed CDS contracts with no intention of ever honouring them. This is fraud.

They didn't expect to honur them because they didn't see the real estate crash, which is what triggered the CDS payouts. Its no different than writing a fire insurance policy on 100 buildings and they all burn down. They don't expect it but it happens. In this case many of the assets the CDS' insured went bad, thus the excessive claims on the CDS. Not what I would call fraud. They weren't the only ones writing CDS'.

 

[BottomsUp]

This ridiculous tax bill will die.

 

[fuji]

It needs to be a little more focussed on the bad guys. The AIG bonuses are offensive because they are being paid to exactly the people who got the company into trouble.

I take Citi CEO Pandit's point though that the bonus tax is going to apply to everyone in his business and many of those individuals are going great work in departments that had nothing whatever to do with the problem.

The bonus tax is a sledgehammer approach to a problem that was calling for a scalpel.

However at some level the banks had this coming to them: They could have behaved responsibly and solved the problem on their own so that government intervention would not be necessary. Anybody with a clue would figure out that a government response is going to be a sledgehammer approach and should have acted appropriately to avoid it being necessary.

 

[S.C. Joe]

Any company who doesn't like it can just pay back the government the money that was lent to them and this tax law will not effect them. AIG has gotten 182 billion so far...anybody understand that is A LOT of money!


Many of those same people who are against this tax bill would be screaming murder if the government gave free homes to the homeless people on the street. How is it any different thou?

 

[Rockslinger]

Its no different than writing a fire insurance policy on 100 buildings and they all burn down. They don't expect it but it happens.

If it is no different for 100 buidings, does it also mean it is also no different for 1,000 buildings or 10,000 buildings or 100,000 buildings? If yes, then our financial system and fraud and malpractice laws are wacko.

What happened in the AIG debacle can best be illustrated by the following example that we can all relate to. You sign a contract with a roofer to install a new roof for $10,000. In the commission of the roofing job, the roofer destroys your house. Does the law say that you must still pay the $10,000 to the roofer because a contract is a contract is contract?

 

[Mencken]

These AIG execs are cut from the same cloth as Madoff. They (AIG execs) signed CDS contracts with no intention of ever honouring them. This is fraud.
They should all be in jail (just like Madoff) and forced to make restitution for the $$billions they caused AIG and the taxpayers as well as forfeiture of their ill gotten gains (salaries and bonuses etc.).

Heard on the radio this morning that there is a protest march to the AIG execs' multi-million dollar homes in Connecticut to-day or tomorrow. Shades of the French Revolution when the peasants rose up and overthrew the nobility?

This is BS. CDS contracts have been going on for years, and have always been honored, and will always be honored (with the exception of the ultimate backer going bankrupt). This was business...and remains business. It is, ultimately, insurance. And the people getting the bonuses did not create the system or design it or anything else...they were just doing their jobs and now the company owes them their pay. And part of that pay was set up on a bonus system.

This whole move by the US Congress (and possibly the government is this passes) is a BS witchhunt. The people of the US should be ashamed of their government at a time like this. Although I was a supporter of Obama I have to believe that this is petty Democratic politics at work. Punish the rich or find some scapegoat to blame for the current economic woes. And the governement and regulatory system were ultimately to blame. And some of it goes back to former Democratic times....not just the Republicans.

 

[Rockslinger]

CDS contracts have been going on for years, and have always been honored, and will always be honored (with the exception of the ultimate backer going bankrupt).

CDS contracts (and fire and life insurance for that matter) has been going on for years. That is not the issue. The problem is when AIG execs knew (or should have known) they wrote so many CDS contracts that there was no way in heck they could honour them.

 

[Gyaos]

This ridiculous tax bill will die.

I dunno. A Democrat majority with Republican support and a Democrat President who will sign a bill taxing the issuance of collected tax-payer money to keep incompetent banks, shadow banks and insurance companies acting like banks for the rewarding of behavior to collapse the US and global economies, imposed by bad legislation? I think Mark Haynes of CNBC will not be working there much longer......GE is collapsing, and he put his foot in his elephant trunk during this interview.

How will an amendment to the amendment be repealed?

Gyaos Baltar.

 

[Rockslinger]

And the government and regulatory system were ultimately to blame. And some of it goes back to former Democratic times....not just the Republicans.

This is the problem with Western societies. We don't believe in individual responsibility anymore. It is always the government's fault, or the regulators, or society or our parents' fault.

A 20 year old man robs a bank. It is not his fault. It is society's fault. It is the government's fault. It is the police's fault. It is the school's fault.

 

[danmand]

CDS contracts (and fire and life insurance for that matter) has been going on for years. That is not the issue. The problem is when AIG execs knew (or should have known) they wrote so many CDS contracts that there was no way in heck they could honour them.

Exactly. It was fraud.