American Morning
amFIX: A quick tour
Hi everyone,
Welcome to amFIX. Let me give you a quick tour.
We’ve tried to keep the design as clean as possible. Each blog post has an avatar next to the byline at the top so you can easily identify who it was posted by. That way if you only want to read a post by a certain reporter, just scroll down until you see their face.
Each day starts off with What’s on Tap, which gives you a rundown of who and what you can see on the show.
That is followed up by Fast Forward, a look at the stories that will be making news later in the day. It’s kind of like a cheat sheet for what will be news in the hours ahead.
Business Correspondent Christine Romans blogs each morning about the latest financial and economic news in Minding Your Business. The rest of the AM reporters will post throughout the day with news and commentary on the stories they are following.
We want as much feedback from you as possible. So now we have a toll-free phone number for you to call and leave your voice comments/questions. 1-877-MY-AM-FIX. We will pick some of these and air them on the show each day. We’ll even take some of them that we don’t air and post them in a daily blog called We Listen, along with your feedback from Facebook, Twitter, email and the amFIX blog comments. It’s a daily round-up of the best feedback from you. Because honestly, we do listen. Oh and just a note about comments: Please keep them brief and free of any profanity. That includes using characters to m@sk w0rd$. We will not approve them.
So the long and short of it – we have a ton of ways for you to reach out to us. There’s no excuse not to!
And stay tuned. We have some more exciting things planned for the future.
About this Show
Welcome to the American Morning blog where you can get daily news updates from American Morning's reporters and producers. Join us for "the most news in the morning," weekdays from 6-9 a.m. ET, only on CNN.
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They have this debate on making drugs legal? Are they completely nuts?
Thank the lord, I raised 4 children and none of them would ever think of doing this. Not only I would have turned them in, but, we also live in an area where one policeman went to the schools. He brought pictures of some kid that took drugs and rubbed his face off on a stop sign. A real bloody mess, so I heard. He showed pictures of very graphic before and after pictures. My son had nightmares for a long time, but it worked. I have smart children, and told them that one ounce of alchohol removes and destroys 10,000 brain cells and if they wished to go to college and become someone, they would have less brains to do so. All are successful. They drink moderately, and always as they told me remember my preaching. None of us even take prescription meds. More drugs.
RE: DRUG EDUCATION Drug education has not worked – check out the DARE program in the schools – my son is 30, and participated in this elementary school drug awareness program – any evidence that this program had an impact on reducing drug use among young adults?
How many marijuana-related drug deaths in the past year? How many alcohol related deaths, including innocent victims? ALCOHOL is the real "gateway drug".
MEDICAL MARIJUANA – for many years we have had legalized heroin for medical purposes – Demerol, Morphine – I don't see any valid reason to withhold this drug from those whose suffering would be reduced, other than irrational panic.
Would it help to print a deck of cards like they did with the terrorists (they are just as bad) and put a picture of each and every individual and a count down of who gives up their bonuses?
Good idea for people to distance themselves and to rewrite all insurances due this company to other companies. Boycott all employees and heads to going to any other companies.
AIG needs to be boycotted along with its subsidiaries. Americans need to make these fraudulent companies pay for their indiscretions and misdeeds. We cannot tolerate any longer big corporations that take Americans and our country for a financial ride and they should not enjoy the fruits of our labor, that being our hard earned money. Enough is Enough!
Is there a legal way that the IRS could audit AIG and also tell all employees who received the bonuses that they will be audited also?
Earlier this morning an expert was commenting on the fact that the AIG payments were not "bonuses" but were "contractual obligations." I don't seem to recall any of those in Congress on the Republican side taking this position when they were clamoring for the auto companies to fail, go into bankruptcy and redo the contracts with the unions, thus avoiding the "contractual obligations" to the unions.
I wish we would give the same amount of attention to companies that continue to off shore jobs as we give to AIG and the bonuses. While the government works on creating jobs we still have companies continuing to off shore jobs. If we don't stop or reduce the off shoring of jobs we will continue to go downhill as a country. I'm a manager working for an IT company and I'm currently tasked with off shoring jobs and it makes me sick on a daily basis. My company continues to see off shoring as the way to go. Everytime I here about the high amount of jobs going away I cringe. They are not going away they are going off shore. We need to get more attention on the off shoring of jobs.
How about some investigation concerning accountability for those who have caused the current economic crisis, starting with George W.
AIG said the bonuses were promised before they got the bailout money. How come they made promises when they didn't have any money to back their promises. What would they have do if they didn't get the money from the government.
Whatever happened to old antitrust laws? You could force the use of Chapter 11 for AIG. Step up to the plate senators! Seize the assets! Tax the bonuses 100%. Thank God we got a new president! dbh
My question is this, had they not received the bailout money, how then would the bonuses have been paid?
Somehow, when WorldCom/MCI went down, none of the employees had their funds paid in full, it all went away. Maybe, just maybe that is what the employees receiving their bonuses need to get, a blast from the past business practices.
Oh wait, they are still practicing the bad habits demonstrated by ENRON AND WORLDCOM C-Levels, greed & fraud...!
Two things: 1. If AIG is paying it's best and brightest then we are in big trouble. Wasn't it those same "best and brightest" that just caused the company to record the largest recoreded loss in a quarter last quarter? Why are they paying these "best and brightest"; to further cause colapse? 2. When the infrastructure is repaired or started to be repaired (don't get me wrong, we need the bridges and roads repaired), and the money is gone, what happens to all those so called created jobs? Do they just go away again, and won't that just bring us back to square one?! Where will it all end? Do we have another stimulus to fix the economy?
Keep stalling the payback until they ask What will open the spigget and say when you stop paying for these Failed Corporate Executives we can talk about it.
How would AIG have paid these bonuses if they didn't get government money? Just wondering.
I recently saw people saying that AIG "Put us in this shape by making bad bets." on CNN. Those bets were on American mortgages, if they would not have made those bets the people complaining wouldn't have got a home in the first place. Sure they're mad, but $165 million dollars in bonus money is peanuts. That is not even a 1/5th of a billion. We gave, or are giving them $40+ billion. So lets be mad about $39.8 billion that's being used for, what is it being used for again ?
Further note...yeah may sound like a lot of money to most but the lowest of those were bonuses were $1,000 ..which in New York won't pay a month of rent.
Taxpayers own 80% of AIG, and soon the banks. So how is that different from Communism, maybe its not, maybe that's why the Obama administration doesn't care about Russians in Venezuela, Why should they ? We're just like them, right ?
We'll have to hire more police to become a true police state but that's inevitably going to happen. Since government's thinking is more police equals more fines and fees to bring in revenue.
In our community of Kokomo, Indiana we have three(3) Chrysler Plants and one (1) Delphi Automotive Plant, needless to say, the folks in our community have been hit extremely hard by this lagging economy. Why is it when the Big 3 needed help to keep thousands of the Middle Class working Congress held numerous hearings and it was negatively reported on by all of the newsmedia but when AIG literally was handed billions of taxpayers dollars without oversight and very little scrutiny, the Government and media hasnt beat them up like they did the Automakers? It is a complete an utter outrage that the media, CNN included, is not being agressive enough in giving AIG the criticism and ire it deserves like you all have with the Automakers. Is it that the Middle Class arent as important as the Wall Street White Collar workers?
I am the proud wife of a UAW Autoworker and we are just living day to day not knowing what our future holds for our family. I am a stay at home Mom with a college degree and cannot find a job, we are doing everything right and yet we are not getting "Bailed Out" . That money AIG recieved should have been given to the American People to help them out. We wouldnt have wasted it like AIG did. Shame on AIG, shame on the Government for allowing it to happen and shame on CNN and the media for not reporting it fairly.
There has been alot of bail-out money passed out,For busniess,and home mortages. There are people out here who struggled to pay off their mortage but could not afford the homeowner insurance,there has got to be some help for them somewhere to help them get some home repairs that are needed but cannot afford. The way things are now my home will collapse while I am livivg in it. Thank you
I am getting quite sick of people blaming everyone else for losing their property. Has anyone actually sat down and thought that in fact there are a huge amount of these people that took equity loans and bought properties abroad.
what they fail to tell anyone is that nobody knows about this and if they sell these houses and condos and keep the money in that country i.e. mexico no one will ever know
Basically it means they have been given x amount of thousands of dollars by the bank free. How many people do you think they will tell
With almost two months in office President Obama has accomplish alot, and i like what he's doing. It's good to see that each states will be getting stimulus money to fix roads and bridges,Education,crime, and to give each student a laptop computer in each classroom.
These first 100 days in office is starting to get very interesting.
Paying these AIG bonuses is disgusting. Taking the tax payer money to keep these businesses going is making me crazy. Aren't bonuses paid to employees that do a good job? Well, these people have helped run the country into the ground, and getting a bonus for that is ridiculous. I'm so tired of hearing about keeping the best and the brightest, I could be sick. There are many people out of work and new business school graduates from across the country that are looking for work. I'm sure some of these people could do a better job than the idiots that currently hold these jobs. Please, don't give AIG anymore money. My concern is that the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner is part of the problem not part of the solution.
I have heard so much of the bail out but nothing about the retiries.and AIG I wounder if the government would give every household 1/2 million dollars we would not have to bail out out anyone and the country would be back on track in a short time it would stop foreclosers the car companys would not need money
Don't you think that the Obama administration should have checked out AIG before giving them the money. It was like the government was so eager to give the AIG the money. The government wants to set the rules after the money was spent. Why didn't the Government check it out before giving the money. I still can't get a good interest rate on my home yet. AND I'M CURRENT. Go figure.
I havn't heard this brought up yet, but if AIG hadn't been bailed out there would be no money for these "bonuses". In fact there wouldn't be any salaries at all. The American people are scraping by on minimum wage, losing their jobs, bonuses and pay rages are being scrapped across the country nad thsese guys say "Oh, we have to"!
Most people don't make anywhere close to what these bonuses are worth. AIG needs to get over themselves take a step back and turn down these bonuses. They make enough money without them.
The direction these comments are taking is frightening to me. I am an American. I believe in the American dream, which is a risk. The problem folks, is NOT the company paying their executives. The problem is that we allowed our elected officials to bail them out in the first place. Now, playing right into the plan, Americans will feel justified by government imposing regulations on income and pay plans in the (not so) private sector. The comments you are presenting features Americans endorsing socialism. I am NOT endorsing the bonuses paid! AIG has once again been given enough rope to hang us all.
Here's a great solution to the AIG bonuses problem: Pay the bonuses, plus interest even, with promisary notes from future AIG profits ...only after the American Taxpayer has been paid back. This would honor legal contractual obligations and give them a profitable insentive to fix the problem. It would be too embarassing for any sane and reasonable person to reject this compromise, especially if the idea is floated publically.
Re AIG
Seems to me that AIG is just doing what our congess recently did when they passed that bill with all the earmarks (pork) and we were told the bill couldn't be changes because it was prepared by the last Congress...the pot is calling the kettle black here..that pork should have been eliminated...there goes more millions down the drain and projects that could have waited or not done at all.
Your morning commentators speculated as to where the Madoff's could have hidden the other billions they stole. (We've just seen their cars/homes/jewelry.) Bernie could not have done this by himself–not when he was absent from the office for months at a time. I hope the gov't is examining all in his company–especially his sons.
(His meeting with them when he "confessed" was probably a planning session about his taking the hit for all of them. Check everyone at his firm.)
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL THE BUSH PEOPLE THEY LOST.