Disclaimer: The posting of this video does not necessarily imply an endorsement of the views contained therein. (Is that good lawyer language?)

Now, with those two things out of the way, please feast your eyes (and ears) on the angriest white male in the universe (hat tip: @huffingtonpost).

You can expect this same brilliant efficiency to be applied to the healthcare system once the government takes it over, too. Yes, you can.

So AIG had long ago written contracts with some of its higher paid executives in which they were asked to work for an annual salary of $1 per year, with the promise of bonuses to be paid in March 2009. The stated purpose of this was to retain the services of those who would be most able to lead AIG out of its huge pit of quicksand. It’s actually a decent argument. After all, if you were a competent person at the top of AIG and you knew first-hand what a house of cards it really was, wouldn’t you want to leave when the cards started to tumble? And besides, who really wants to work for $1 per year for a company whose name has become synonymous with “pile of crap?”

Now, even though it’s currently the trendy thing to deny any knowledge of said contracts and to simultaneously express disgust and outrage at the payment of these contractually obligatory bonuses, somebody somewhere stuck that provision into the “stimulus” package. Exactly who did it and at whose behest is up for grabs at the moment, and it really doesn’t even matter that much. The point is this: The stimulus package that nobody had time to read, that emergency spending measure that was supposed to stimulate the economy and get it moving again to avoid the meltdown — remember it? Anybody who voted for it, and certainly the messiah who signed it into law, now has proverbial blood on his hands, whether they read the thing or not. Their votes and signatures are endorsements of whatever was in that bloated bill. But, again, I digress.

So the media picks up on these bonus payments by AIG to some of its top executives, which, as previously noted, totaled $165 million, or less than 0.1% of the amount of the taxpayer dollars that AIG has received. Obviously this doesn’t look good, and the public is outraged that their dollars are being used to pay giant sums of money to people who apparently aren’t very good at their jobs. Congresspeeps, sensing a ripe opportunity for their favorite activity, grandstanding, decide to levy an astounding 90% tax on that bonus money, which effectively amounts to a bill of attainder, which is, of course, clearly unconstitutional and illegal. And stupid, too.

Here is the relevant part of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 says that “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall ever be passed, and no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.”

Now, I’m not a lawyer (yet), but it seems to me to be pretty clear. There are a ton of lawyers in Congress, and how they can reconcile their 90% bonus tax with the Constitution is beyond me. AIG had negotiated these contracts — whether anybody else likes them or not — and they had to be honored. We can’t have the federal government coming in and tearing up contracts made between two consenting entities just because they become unpopular. If the government wanted to negate the bonus contracts, they should have let AIG go bankrupt. The fact that AIG needed a bailout at all proves that maybe, just maybe, there are some money management problems there, so no one should be surprised when AIG does some stupid things with taxpayer dollars. Nevertheless, under pressure from Congress, the White House, the media, and buses full of angry mobs, some of these AIG executives have agreed to give back at least a portion of their bonus money.

But not Jake DeSantis. Channeling Ayn Rand, Mr. DeSantis submitted his resignation letter not only to Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG (who is also working for $1 per year), but also to the New York Times for publication on today’s editorial page and for the enjoyment of all. The full two-page letter can be found here, and it’s really worth the read if you have time, but here are a few of my favorite excerpts (emphasis added):

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter…

…I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

…I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

…I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

…At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

…You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings.

…As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threa
tened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

…I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

…I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,

Jake DeSantis

**********

Brilliant.

Love this guy.

Here is his YouTube page. Also, you can follow him on Twitter — I do!

I’m not sure if the messiah can give enough fabulous speeches to quell the rising tide.

This prompted all kinds of outrage in Washington and beyond. The Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is planning to subpoena AIG to find out exactly who received this money and exactly how much. Harry Reid called the bonus money “beyond outrageous.” Nancy Pelosi, everyone’s favorite grandma, pulled out some of the best adjectives of all: “unconscionable” and “extravagant,” to name a few. The messiah himself, once again finding himself strangely impotent in the face of real life, declared this an “outrage” and an affront to our “fundamental values.” Barney Frank, rightly noting the taxpayers’ 80% ownership of AIG, mused that “maybe it’s time to fire some people.” In its defense, AIG claims that it was contractually obligated to make these disbursements.

SIDEBAR: Are you paying attention to this, all you banks who took the government’s money? Did you really think there wouldn’t be a nightmarish tangle of strings attached? As Pops always used to say, you can do whatever you want with your own money; if you’re using my money, I get to have a say. So to all you banks and financial institutions who mismanaged your companies and then accepted the government’s money as an easy way out, I hope you enjoyed your autonomy.

Let’s put this in some perspective here, okay? I mean, $165 million is a lot of money. A lot. But you know what’s an even more humongous amount? Ginormous, even? $170 billion. That’s billion with a B. All these elected officials are having a major cow over an amount of money paid out in bonuses that represents one-tenth of one percent of the amount of the bailout AIG received. Again, for clarity: $165 million in AIG bonus money is equal to roughly 0.1% of the $170 billion that the taxpayers were compelled, without their consent, to donate to the corporate sinkhole known as AIG. So please, senators, congresspeople, and messiah, spare me your manufactured indignation. Now here’s one final number for you to put in your pipe before you start smoking:

Yep, you read that right. Despite the infusion of $170 billion in taxpayer dollars to AIG, they still managed to post a $61.7 billion dollar loss for the 4th quarter of 2008. I must have missed all the outrage caused by that, right?

Oh, by the way, my favorite quote of the day by an outraged senator comes from Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Good stuff. Two things I think are really funny about this: (a) the girth of the portly investment bankers, and (b) the multiple, small, crying children and the cigarettes associated with the recipients of subprime mortgages.

This is a good (but hardly comprehensive) overview of what all happened to land us into this current mess. It does fail to mention the Community Reinvestment Act and the role it played in encouraging and even demanding that banks make riskier and riskier home loans in the name of “affordable housing.” Overall, though, I think this is worth watching to gain a basic understanding of the credit crisis.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli had a “Joe the Plumber” moment this week when he indulged in this rant from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade:

To which the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, responded thus (be sure to watch all the way to the end to get your daily dose of snarky):

Which prompted the following counter by Santelli the next day:

Folks, what you’ve just witnessed here was not an episode of “The Young & The Restless.” It’s a new soap opera called “The Media vs. The Messiah.” I can’t speak with any authority about these prior White House attacks on the media that Kudlow is talking about in the third clip, and I think perhaps he’s being a bit theatrical. I don’t really see this as a First Amendment issue; after all, to my knowledge the White House didn’t threaten or try to silence Santelli. Instead, they just trotted out the smug and apparently very bitter Press Secretary Gibbs to counter Santelli’s impassioned plea for reason. It seems that the White House used that time-tested rebuttal strategy that says the best response to a populist revolt is to send out some completely unlikeable and condescending guy to tell the people that actually they’re all just stupid and if they only could “hit print and read” they’d understand. Brilliant!

I subscribe to this free daily email newsletter from a guy named Martin Weiss, who gives investment advice and commentary. I learned about him from my friend M.H., who spends a lot of time reading and learning about economic matters. Anyway, today’s newsletter asserts that President Obama, in 32 days in office, has already spent upwards of $4 trillion to try to save the economy. That’s $3 trillion for bank bailouts, almost $800 billion for the “stimulus” package, and $275 billion for the help to homeowners in danger of foreclosure. Now here’s the part that made an impression on me: