Ratracer

What about the cash-out refi's? People pocketing the difference of their overinflated home values to purchase big ticket luxury items and now in over their heads also.
What they should do (IMO) is turn all the ARM, balloon and piggyback loans into conventional fixed loans and make the lendors extend the time frame of repayment in accordance of household income, instead of putting my tax dollars in the pocket of an ousted corporate head as a bloated severance package for mismanagement or used as gap insurance for pi$$ poor buying decisions.

jeffs396

Those PR$CKS at AIG should either return the cash, or be brought up on charges for theft!

AJochum

Lone Ranger - Almost sent you a pm last night. Am really going to miss you around here. Maybe all of us could chip in and buy you a beat-up HHR for a project, and you'd stay around.

Wait a minute!!!! There's got to be some sort of a federal plan that could help us achieve the above. Not sure how yet, but then, I'm not from the government and here to help you, nor do I understand the rules.

I will say this. I bought my HHR with a list of 22,600 in January. Today it is worth about 11,000 I supose. Maybe I can get a refund of the difference because that's the "fair market value".

PS - If anyone likes my idea of getting an HHR into Lone Ranger's hands, I can start with a grill and stock air filter. Think Vinny might have a rear gate. I also have a set of warped rotors:)

Lone Ranger

Kind words AJ, they're much appreciated. I'll be hanging out here, never know when I might pop in and comment, especially in the Lounge.

P.S. Your 2LT is worth more than that. My 1LT w/ 2.2 fetched $11,200 trade allowance against $100 below invoice on what I got, so the retail has to be higher, and even additionally higher on a 2LT.

BigMOCats

OK, I just get this from reading the paper BUT AIG was not part of the recent Federal bailout. They were actually LOANED money by the government before the bailout. Also, like most big corporations, there are many differnant divisions within one company. These people were the top 10 salesmen and their families on the insurance side of the business. One that is still doing quite well. They are always treated to some sort of "reward" for a job well done. Many companies in all lines of work offer these type of rewards. The government loan was for the financing side, one that is in deep trouble, like most financing companies. Now the timing of this is not the best and it might have been best to cancel this event in the light of recent developments however but the two are really not related. Only the media trying to dramatize things and add fuel to the fire.

tim_tenn

BigMo-

It wasn't a loan. The government put money into AIG, basically buying a very large percentage of the company. OK, maybe a loan in the fact that as a principal in the company, the Government will (or should?) make some of it's money back when (if) the company returns to profitability.

AND, it's in the news tonight that AIG execs are hinting around that they may need more money. Unbelievable.

Now, I hadn't heard that the people were sales persons. I had heard that they were, in fact, executive personnel. Trust me, I will be doing some more looking now to see what I can find.

AJochum

Well, if that was a party for the Top 10 Salesmen, I sure would have liked to be a part of it. The cost was $440,000, which would work out to about $40 some thousand dollars per person - not a bad party. The one statistic I remember was something like $23,000 for pedicures. I don't care if this was for 1000 people and it was a sub-division of an arm of AIG, this shows the blatent insensitivity of big corporate America to this crisis.

But, perhaps I'm just overreacting....

hhrcrafty

$440,000 really doesn't go as far as it used to for cocaine. They probably wound up with just a few lines for each person.

tim_tenn

Oh, no ... read the breakdown of the charges. First, it was a full WEEK. Not a weekend, not 3 days, but a full week. 20,000+ in bar charges. 1,300 in salon charges. Room charges. Golf charges. Food charges. The breakdown shows a very extravagant week, indeed.

tim_tenn

Oh, and the (now) unemployed previous heads of AIG stated, while testifying in DC, that they were unaware of any previous plans for this week-long getaway. And that's as of 4 to 6 weeks ago. So, sounds like the plans were made AFTER the involvement of the Federal Government.