Summers defends White House response to AIG bonuses

With outrage mounting over AIG’s $165 million in bonuses to executives, the president’s chief economic adviser offered a new line of defense for the White House in an exclusive interview with CNN. Larry Summers suggested that if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had pushed the insurance giant too hard on the bonuses, AIG could have collapsed just like Lehman Brothers and sparked an even bigger crisis

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The Case for Letting AIG Fail

There’s an uproar about whether the government should let AIG fail, a debate re-energized by the latest revelation of bonus payments going to AIG’s executives. In fact, there’s a good case to be made that AIG should fail, and it has nothing to do with bonuses. The rescue of AIG is warping the banking system and unnecessarily extending the credit crisis.

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Treasury pressure leads to AIG scaling back bonuses

Under pressure from the Treasury Department, insurance giant AIG plans to scale back bonuses and compensation for some of its top-earning employees. CNN obtained a letter Saturday from AIG Chairman and CEO Edward Liddy to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in which Liddy pledges in the letter to reduce 2009 bonus payments, which AIG refers to as “retention payments,” by at least 30 percent. Liddy also addresses steps to limit compensation in AIG Financial Products, the London-based unit responsible for issuing the risky credit default swaps, which on several occasions has brought the company to the brink of collapse

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Laid Off in Singapore: Ex-Pats Have to Downsize

On the northern fringe of Singapore, overlooking the slate gray waters of the Johore Strait, the public-housing project where Anthony Fulwood lives is so far from the city’s affluent expatriate enclaves that cabdrivers are stunned when he announces his address. ” ‘For God’s sake, why do you live there?’ they regularly ask me,” says Fulwood. ” ‘You’re white!’ ” Fulwood isn’t the only Western expatriate to take up residence in the cheaper peripheries of this Southeast Asian city.

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Joaquin Guzman Loera: Billionaire Drug Lord

You’ll no doubt recognize the names of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Oprah when scanning Forbes’ latest list of “The World’s Billionaires.” But amid the various business tycoons, A-list celebs and royal heirs on the annual roll call is someone known mainly by members of Mexico’s seedy underground and the police officers who chase them: Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. The 54-year-old, 5’6” drug lord is considered the country’s most wanted criminal. And because his Sinaloa cartel trafficks billions of dollars’ worth of cocaine to the U.S

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Stewart seen as winner in showdown with Cramer

By most accounts, the showdown was pretty brutal. Many watching Thursday night’s “Daily Show” on Comedy Central felt that comedian-turned-media-critic Jon Stewart held bombastic financial guru and CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer’s feet to the fire.

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Idaho man charged again for knowingly spreading HIV

The first person ever convicted in Idaho of knowingly spreading the HIV virus is facing new charges for the same offense, authorities said Thursday. Stewart, whose acerbic brand of satire centers largely on the political news of the day, has held Cramer’s frenetic, nearly cartoonish, stock-advice show, “Mad Money,” and other CNBC programming up as examples of an anything-goes attitude that contributed to the financial collapse. “I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it’s not a [expletive] game,” Stewart said during the recorded interview, segments of which aired on Thursday night

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Stewart slings barbs face-to-face with Cramer

After a week of pointed verbal barbs, host Jon Stewart sat face-to-face with financial analyst Jim Cramer on Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show" and continued the assault Thursday. Stewart blamed Cramer and cable network CNBC for being irresponsible cheerleaders in the lead-up to the stock market meltdown. Stewart, whose acerbic brand of satire centers largely on the political news of the day, has held Cramer’s frenetic, nearly cartoonish, stock-advice show, “Mad Money,” and other CNBC programming up as examples of an anything-goes attitude that contributed to the financial collapse.

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