or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
•
"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
March 19, 2009
Another Feather In The Cap Of The Washington Post's Assignment Editors
What kind of the stories does the Newsletter for America's Richest People (a/k/a the Washington Post) like to cover?
During the past five years, obviously they didn't assign a team to investigate the massive, world-economy destroying catastrophe brewing at AIG. That would have been boring! Plus it would have made many of the Newsletter's readers mad.
But they certainly could make a reporter write a teary story about how hard it is for well-paid financiers to work for AIG today. That's about the horrible problems of rich people, a subject which is always news.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at March 19, 2009 09:19 AM"The handful of souls who championed the firm's now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. "
Please Washington Post whatever you do, don't evaluate those claims and make a meaningful determination of validity! That might lead to someone reading your paper of news and receiving useful, meaningful information, or something totally terrible like that. Just continue regurgitating chunks of anonymous bullshit.
Posted by: Dan at March 19, 2009 01:09 PMPOST AIG'S BOOKS ONLINE, call Pelosi @1-202-225-0100. Imagine the joyus suprise YOU will experience seeing the ledgers on what WE BOUGHT.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at March 19, 2009 03:50 PMNo matter what comes to light--what crimes, what cruelties, what rotten deeds--it's NEVER anybody's fault. Nobody did anything wrong, nobody can ever be held to account, they don't work here anymore, it wasn't me, it was the guy down the hall, the other company did it, the government did it, the bogyman did it.
God damn their lying souls to hell.
Once WE see documentation on AIG WE will at least know where to point OUR fingers. Some has come to light over at Digby's posted by Sarah B.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at March 19, 2009 07:03 PMour hearts certainly go out to them in their time of need-
ing to be stripped of their assets and thrown in jail.
Why would they write about their secret evil schemes at the same time as planning them?
My new favorite thing is hearing about "AIG" giving AIG executives big bonuses. As if "AIG" doesn't mean AIG executives. IT's like a whole new level of stupid.
I think job futures for executives ain't looking so hot. Executioners on the other hand...
Posted by: tim at March 19, 2009 11:22 PMThe New York Times gets in on the game:
One A.I.G. executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared the consequences of identifying himself, said many workers felt demonized and betrayed. “It is as bad if not worse than McCarthyism,” he said.
I was fired from AIG on Sept. 16, the same day that the company collapsed and the stock cratered.
I can't tell you how priceless it was to see my boss's face as she terminated me from what was now manifestly a corrupt shell of an organization.
What is amusing to me is that my old department (business development, ie sales and marketing) is still playing office, getting promotions, fooling around with the database, etc., even though there can not possibly be any business to develop.
Posted by: Seth at March 20, 2009 10:56 AMTo be fair to the AIG greed-heads, their bonuses do have the potential to throw a monkey wrench into Treasury Secretary Geithner's plan to have the Fed print up trillions of dollars to buy worthless assets from the investment banks. I suspect that this is what's really behind all the righteous outrage we're seeing in Congress and the Obama administration right now. "We were all set to give guys just like you trillions of dollars, and you have to go and mess things up for the sake of a few hundred million!"
Several news reports I have read describe this as a "challenge" for Obama: how can he sell the public on a taxpayer-funded bailout when public outrage is being stoked by greedy, short-sighted bankers? Yes, that's quite a challenge, but I'm sure Obama's up to it. If he's not, I expect to hear a lot more of the phrase "failed Obama administration."
Posted by: SteveB at March 20, 2009 12:22 PMI'm really sick of the moaning for the rich stories I've read and heard. For what it's worth, this article ran in the Style section. Also, the WaPo did a fantastic multipart postmortem of Enron back in the day. But they deserve to smacked around for this, repeatedly. (The conservative op-eds today are continuing the class warfare-for-the-rich angle - shocking, I know. It all builds nicely off their establishment pal Richard Cohen sounding his idiot's trumpet for the privileged and clueless earlier this week.)
Posted by: Batocchio at March 20, 2009 04:18 PMWell, at least MoveOn is taking this crisis seriously, with an online game that lets you throw virtual tomatoes at AIG executives.
Compare that powerful example of e-activism with those silly French unions, who only organized about 3 million people in street protests in 200 cities as part of a general strike against the government's economic policies.
Stupid Frenchies. When are they going to learn to take their protests into the 21st century?
Posted by: SteveB at March 20, 2009 05:13 PMThey strike me very much as the Little Eichmanns of whom former Prof. Churchill was referring a few years ago. Really hard to feel sorry for them.
Posted by: James at March 21, 2009 12:03 AMBwaahhahaha...!
Has the economy reset yet?
I used to come to ATR for the giggles, but there's much less amusement these days. What gives?
I can't tell you how priceless it was to see my boss's face as she terminated me from what was now manifestly a corrupt shell of an organization.
Make an effort at describing it. I am thoroughly enjoying the house of cards come down. And I'm not talking about AIG.
Posted by: Angryman@24:30 at March 22, 2009 03:42 PM
