Earlier we showed Barney Frank yelling at the goddamn Code Pink hippies on multiple occasions, but what else happened during this latest 94-hour grandstanding spectacle of a House Financial Services Committee hearing? Why the economy got saved, of course! Ha ha. (Kill us.) America’s C-SPAN watchers did, however, get to see such luminaries as Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Maxine Waters confuse and/or irritate the hell out of Geithner and Bernanke (mostly Geithner — he scowls!) Plus there was this crazy guy from Illinois whom Bernanke shot down during a rare burst of self-confidence. Hooray for Congress! Burn it! MORE »

Hey all you elite cocktail-sipping Georgetown dandies gumming your cucumber sandwiches at tea time: Barack Obama is NOT overexposing himself with the daily live-teevee appearances and “town halls” and Jay Leno guest spots. In fact, this is how you make Americans love you, in this country. You just show up on every teevee show, laughing weirdly, dancing, saying vaguely untrue things, smiling, etc., and then your approval ratings just go up, up, up. MORE »

Here’s some thrilling footage of last Saturday’s much-hyped “bus tour” of various AIG executives’ mansions, in Connecticut. The people on this tour… they do not make as much money as the AIG executives. This frustrates them. So they either read letters aloud or deliver them to the AIG executives’ mailboxes. C’mon, really? At least take a shit on the lawn or something. [YouTube]

Remember how the derivatives people at AIG got big bonuses last week and everyone went nuts including the House which ran around trying to tax everything? Uhh: “Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced late Monday afternoon that 9 of the top 10 bonus recipients at the American International Group had given back their bonuses.” And 15 of the top 20, and $80 million of the total $165 million. Cuomo did this by simply threatening to subpoena and expose all of these people — at least the ones within his jurisdiction — and they all got scared and paid the money back. Pay attention, everyone! [NYT]

When historians look back on the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 and 2009, they will find a single culprit. It won’t be the completely asymmetric system of risk and reward that compensated executives and traders handsomely regardless of whether they made or lost billions, nor will it be a 30-year trend in widening inequality between the investment class and people who make money the old-fashioned way (by “working”), nor will it be the demise of the manufacturing sector to the benefit of the financial services sector until we became a nation of bankers selling worthless shit to each other for increasingly laughable amounts of money. No, the dastardly poison in the American heart was one very simple thing: the names of these criminal companies that lost all of our dollars. And once we change their names, the entire system will heal itself. MORE »

Populism, hurrah! There are now “Bus Tours of AIG Executives’ Mansions,” in Connecticut. Your tour guide? Chris Dodd, maybe! This will show these wretched villains! Here is the live video. [BoingBoing]

The popular New York City blog Gawker has posted this leaked memo to the staff of AIG, about the things they should do to avoid their immediate death when in public. It includes such oldies as “If you think you are being followed, immediately dial 911.” But why does AIG management assume that the police will want to save these people? [Gawker]

Goddammit. We began this week fueled by the fires of righteous indignation that those AIG twats were getting money, any money at all, from the government or anybody else, regardless of when it was awarded or for what purpose, because seriously what a crowd of worthless cocks. But now just several days later, our House of Representatives has gone ahead and “channeled the people’s rage” with the dumbest legislation since Terry Schiavo, which has cleverly backed all your liberal bloggers into reassessing this whole KILL THE WEALTHY MEATSTICKS approach. MORE »

By the Comics Curmudgeon
Remember the good old days of American wit when our nation’s cleverest sat around an elitist table at a fancy New York City hotel and made cutting remarks so subtle and erudite that nobody within earshot could tell what the hell they were talking about? And also, they were drunk? Well, those days are over (except for the drunk part). David Denby has informed us that, thanks to the awful blogs, we now just essentially hurl the verbal equivalent of feces at each other all the time, except when we are hurling actual, literal feces. Just so, our political cartoons have similarly devolved, from intellectual, high-art pieces that reward long-term study and contemplation to the current things that you are about to read, which are for the mouth-breathing morons who only like creepy pictures. Unfortunately, those morons only watch TV, which is why the newspapers that run these cartoons will soon be bankrupt. MORE »

Really, this rigmarole about Chris Dodd being the lyingest liar of liars who is responsible for the AIG bonuses because he took money from their contributors before the company broke down is… weak. Trite even! MORE »

This will learn ‘em good: The House of Representatives just passed this “tax those fancy stockjobbers at the 90% rate” legislation, which means the federal money used to pay off these bailout bitches will now be taxed at 90% — if the bonus-getter’s income is over $250,000, so Joe the Plumber is still safe from socialism — which means the money will be filtered through these people who destroyed the Global Economy (with the permission of Alan Greenspan and Reagan’s Ghost) for a !0% commission. So if your bonus for ruining Earth was, say, a million bucks this month, at least you’ll still have a $100,000 left over for cocaine. MORE »