Now we know why Chris Dodd was so interested in giving to AIG what AIG wanted. He only got weak kneed because he got caught!
By Kevin Rennie
No wonder Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) went wobbly last week when asked about his February amendment ratifying hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives at insurance giant AIG. Dodd has been one of the company's favorite recipients of campaign contributions. But it turns out that Senator Dodd's wife has also benefited from past connections to AIG as well.
From 2001-2004, Jackie Clegg Dodd served as an "outside" director of IPC Holdings, Ltd., a Bermuda-based company controlled by AIG. IPC, which provides property casualty catastrophe insurance coverage, was formed in 1993 and currently has a market cap of $1.4 billion and trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol IPCR. In 2001, in addition to a public offering of 15 million shares of stock that raised $380 million, IPC raised more than $109 million through a simultaneous private placement sale of 5.6 million shares of stock to AIG - giving AIG a 20% stake in IPC. (AIG sold its 13.397 million shares in IPC in August, 2006.)
Clegg was compensated for her duties to the company, which was managed by a subsidiary of AIG. In 2003, according to a proxy statement, Clegg received $12,000 per year and an additional $1,000 for each Directors' and committee meeting she attended. Clegg served on the Audit and Investment committees during her final year on the board.
IPC paid millions each year to other AIG-related companies for administrative and other services. Clegg was a diligent director. In 2003, the proxy statement report, she attended more than 75% of board and committee meetings. This while she served as the managing partner of Clegg International Consultants, LLC, which she created in 2001, the year she joined the board of IPC. (See Dodd's public financial disclosure reports with the Senate from 2001-2004 here.)
Dodd is likely more familiar with the complicated workings of AIG than he was letting on last week. This week may provide him with another opportunity to refresh his recollections.
Kevin Rennie, a former Republican state senator, is a columnist for the Hartford Courant. He can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com.
Click on the link below to read more...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/dodds_wife_a_former_director_o.html
Showing posts with label AIG executive bonuses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AIG executive bonuses. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2009
Cheap Political Theatre
Liberals have been using these tactics against the republicans for over 70 years now. They like to threaten and intimidate to get their way. They will stop at nothing.
By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com Death threats to executives at AIG, because of the bonuses they received, are one more sign of the utter degeneration of politics in our time.
Congressman Barney Frank has threatened to summon these executives before his committee and force them to reveal their home addresses— which would of course put their wives and children at the mercy of whatever kooks might want to literally take a shot at them.
Whatever the political or economic issues involved, this is not the way such issues should be resolved in America. We are not yet a banana republic, though that is the direction in which some of our politicians are taking us— especially those politicians who make a lot of noise about "compassion" and "social justice."
What makes this all the more painfully ironic is that it is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.
No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership। Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages।
Senator Christopher Dodd has played the same role in the Senate as Barney Frank played in the House of Representatives. Now both are summoning government employees and the officials of financial institutions before their committees to be lambasted in front of the media.
Dodd and Frank know that the best defense is a good offense. Both know how hard it would be to defend their own roles in the housing debacle, so they go on the offensive against others who are in no position to reply in kind, given the vindictive powers of Congress.
This political theater is in one sense cheap beyond words. In another sense, it is costly beyond words.
It is cheap because the politicians who are creating this distraction from their own role also voted for the very legislation that enabled contracted bonuses to be paid by companies like AIG that received government bailout money. If members of Congress can't be bothered to read the laws they pass, then they have no basis for whipping up lynch mob outrage against people who did read the law and acted within the law.
Just as everyone seemed to be a military expert a couple of years ago, when it was chic to say that the "surge" in Iraq would not work, so today everyone seems to be an expert on executive pay.
Whether the particular executives who received bonuses were the ones responsible for AIG's problems, or were among those who warned against those problems, is something that those of us on the outside don't know. That includes those in politics and the media who are making the loudest noise.
The politicians claim to be protecting the taxpayers' money. But having politicians trying to micro-manage any business is far more likely to make those businesses lose more money, including the taxpayers' money.
Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
Politicians and bureaucrats micro-managing the mortgage sector of the economy is precisely how today's economic disaster began. Why anyone would think that their micro-managing the automobile industry, or executive pay across a wide sweep of other industries, is likely to make things better in the economy is a mystery.
The real point is to pander to envy and resentment against people who make a lot of money. Envy is always referred to by its political alias, "social justice." But to put the lives of the wives and children of executives at risk for the sake of Beltway grandstanding shows how low our political saviors have sunk.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Thomas Sowell's column by clicking here.
Click on the link below to read more.....
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell032409.php3
By Thomas Sowell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com Death threats to executives at AIG, because of the bonuses they received, are one more sign of the utter degeneration of politics in our time.
Congressman Barney Frank has threatened to summon these executives before his committee and force them to reveal their home addresses— which would of course put their wives and children at the mercy of whatever kooks might want to literally take a shot at them.
Whatever the political or economic issues involved, this is not the way such issues should be resolved in America. We are not yet a banana republic, though that is the direction in which some of our politicians are taking us— especially those politicians who make a lot of noise about "compassion" and "social justice."
What makes this all the more painfully ironic is that it is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.
No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership। Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages।
Senator Christopher Dodd has played the same role in the Senate as Barney Frank played in the House of Representatives. Now both are summoning government employees and the officials of financial institutions before their committees to be lambasted in front of the media.
Dodd and Frank know that the best defense is a good offense. Both know how hard it would be to defend their own roles in the housing debacle, so they go on the offensive against others who are in no position to reply in kind, given the vindictive powers of Congress.
This political theater is in one sense cheap beyond words. In another sense, it is costly beyond words.
It is cheap because the politicians who are creating this distraction from their own role also voted for the very legislation that enabled contracted bonuses to be paid by companies like AIG that received government bailout money. If members of Congress can't be bothered to read the laws they pass, then they have no basis for whipping up lynch mob outrage against people who did read the law and acted within the law.
Just as everyone seemed to be a military expert a couple of years ago, when it was chic to say that the "surge" in Iraq would not work, so today everyone seems to be an expert on executive pay.
Whether the particular executives who received bonuses were the ones responsible for AIG's problems, or were among those who warned against those problems, is something that those of us on the outside don't know. That includes those in politics and the media who are making the loudest noise.
The politicians claim to be protecting the taxpayers' money. But having politicians trying to micro-manage any business is far more likely to make those businesses lose more money, including the taxpayers' money.
Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
Politicians and bureaucrats micro-managing the mortgage sector of the economy is precisely how today's economic disaster began. Why anyone would think that their micro-managing the automobile industry, or executive pay across a wide sweep of other industries, is likely to make things better in the economy is a mystery.
The real point is to pander to envy and resentment against people who make a lot of money. Envy is always referred to by its political alias, "social justice." But to put the lives of the wives and children of executives at risk for the sake of Beltway grandstanding shows how low our political saviors have sunk.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Thomas Sowell's column by clicking here.
Click on the link below to read more.....
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell032409.php3
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