Most incompetent Banking Committee Chairman. Ever

Trying to keep track of all of Chris Dodd's blunders is like trying to watch the 'Cuse-UConn basketball game every night. It's tiring , time consuming and amazing to behold

Overnight we we treated to the spectacle of the Banking Committee Chairman and the Treasury Secretary throwing each other under the bus over the odious AIG bonuses that somehow were grandfathered in under federal law in the "stimulus" bill.

The Artful Doddger just returned tan rested and ready from a tropical vacation and posted this overnight. 

"The administration blames this all on what they are calling the "Dodd Amendment," the executive compensation amendment to the stimulus bill that included the loophole allowing bonus payments that had already been agreed to prior to February 11. Dodd denies he was the author of that aspect of the provision , but he won't pin it on anyone else, either. 

Dodd's original amendment did not include that exemption, and the Connecticut Senator denied inserting the provision."I can't point a finger at someone who was responsible for putting those dates in," Dodd told Fox. "I can tell you this much, when my language left the senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did." "

So let's see . The Treasury blames Dodd for writing the clause in the Porkulus bill that protected the greedheads at AIG and then Dodd blames someone else for it, denying his own responsibility.  It's like a Sherlock Holmes mystery; the case of the stimulus amendment that not only did not bark in the night, but slobbered all over the villains.

As 1962 NY Mets manager Casey Stengel said

"Can't anyone here play this game?"

We can't expect a Senate Committee Chairman to keep track of what's in a bill that goes to the President's desk for signature, now can we?

The Senator now vents in outrage . However, the record shows a perpetual state of cluelessness about the AIG issue on Dodd's part which is astonishing in its scope.

Let's consider this exchange from the DC Examiner with Dodd's spokeswoman

Dodd, she said, “was completely unaware of these AIG bonuses,” and it is “categorically false” to suggest Dodd orchestrated the exception to allow the bonuses to be handed out

Maybe Dodd could do what Governor Palin does to stay informed. Hmm, read the paper. I'm sure the Washington Post is delivered to all of the Senator's multiple addresses.

AIG disclosed its retention-payment program more than a year ago, and the amount of the bonuses -- more than $400 million for Financial Products alone -- had been widely reported.

So Dodd's story is as the Chairman of the Banking Committee he was "completely unaware" of hundreds of millions of dollars of bonuses at a firm receiving $170 billion in federal bailout money---when the bonuses were were reported in the press a year ago. Yep. That's his story. Got a new bridge to sell, I see.   And guess what, the folks at AIG (Allies In Greed?) were asked by Geithner to decline the bonuses, but told him to pound sand. 

AIG’s new management team last year proposed that its employees give up their “retention” bonuses, or at least reduce them. The response from the 370 or so employees set to rake in $450 million in bonuses through 2010?Take a hike.  “We suggested that early on, but there are people who feel this money was due them,” a source close to the company told The Hill.  It apparently didn’t matter that taxpayers have provided $170 billion and counting to bail out AIG. “Quants,” the people who put together the computer-programmed algorithms behind the complicated hedges and trades that brought down the company, pushed back hard against any notion they should sacrifice their bonuses, the source said.   

Well, why should they. Chris Dodd was the Number #1 recipient of AIG cash through the years, and maybe he had their back. And now blames it on his own incompetence. This is what it has come to. When someone accuses Chris Dodd of being evil, his defense is he is only stupid.   It's far past time to shut down Bailout Nation. And its far past time to remove the utter incompetents "managing" the Treasury Department, the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee.

 ====UPDATE====

Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Tim Geithner claims he didn;t know about these bonuses, either

An administration official said that despite having engineered the first two rescues of AIG while president of the New York Fed, Mr. Geithner didn't know about the pending bonuses until last week.

So much for the Democrats being the party of intellectuals. Fire them all.