Pat Sullivan Blog

WSJ - Science Doubts Global Warming

The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

• By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Associated Press

Steve Fielding

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare?

A great article from Australia. 

Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, has been received with such enthusiasm and is into its third print run in as many weeks. [It's now up to the fifth printing.]  (To be releases in the US on July 1.)

What does Plimer's book say? Here is Sheehan's summary:

Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive."…

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable—human-induced CO2—is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly

The Cap and Trade Bill in Congress needs to be stopped based on flawed science, dramatic increased costs to American consumers and the number of jobs that will be lost in America.

Open letter to the Congress and Administration

Here is a letter written by a woman in Arizona.  I agree 100% with what she says.  Read and pass it on if you do too!

The AIG Truth!!

Here is a great summation of many of the things I have been saying here for the past week or so.  What happened to AIG employees is an outrage.  The whole AIG outrage aside, America and the rest of the world, depend upon our "rule of law" and "sanctity of contracts"!  When Congress and a President comes to believe they can overrule law and contracts in order to punish who they wish, or who the "majority of people" want to punish then tyranny has arrived.

The Real AIG Disgrace - Wall Street Journal -subscribe online!!

    *
      By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

The stock market was intoxicated with the Obama administration's toxic asset plan. Whatever its contempt for the upper middle class that acquires wealth through salaried work and bonuses, Team Obama still has eyes for the hedge fund class, which will be ladled out taxpayer dollars to make one-way bets on problematic bank assets.
[Business World] AP

Andrew Cuomo and Tim Geithner.

Yet the AIG bonus episode, the administration's one true disgrace so far, will not soon be forgotten.

Tim Geithner is rightly on the hot seat for saying he didn't know about the bonuses until just weeks ago -- because he should have quelled this furor before it ever got started. Instead he played dumb and climbed aboard the outrage bandwagon -- and let Mr. Obama do the same.

There is not a shred of justice in the hysteria that followed. As AIG chief Ed Liddy explained on the Hill last week, the people receiving retention bonuses were not the same people who launched AIG's unhedged housing bets that brought the company down. Those people were gone. Their pay is already being clawed back.

Those who remained had been asked a year ago to stay and work themselves out of a job. In accepting the terms offered to them, they committed no offense (say, failing to pay taxes). Their only crime was possessing marketable knowledge -- all the more marketable because of the opportunity for hedge funds and other counterparties to profit from AIG's distress. Had the company submitted to Chapter 11 rather than a government takeover, a bankruptcy judge might well have authorized identical incentives to minimize losses and maximize recovery for legitimate stakeholders.

The Washington Post, which has consistently distinguished itself with its reporting about the real antecedents of this "scandal," yesterday followed up by detailing "months of assurances to Financial Products employees that the insurance giant would honor those contracts, according to numerous internal AIG e-mails and memos . . . ."

Whether Mr. Geithner knew the specifics is unimportant. The retention plan was known to his staff. The details had been disclosed over and over in public filings. As far back as October, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had summoned the Treasury-appointed Mr. Liddy to hammer out a deal on AIG's pay practices. Said Mr. Cuomo in a statement afterward: "These actions are not intended to jeopardize the hard-earned compensation of the vast majority of AIG's employees, including retention and severance arrangements, who are essential to rebuilding AIG and the economy of New York."

The voluble Rep. Elijah Cummings had been railing about AIG retention bonuses almost continually, on air, in the print media, and in publicly released letters to Mr. Liddy, since Dec. 1.

On March 3, Mr. Geithner himself was quizzed during a congressional hearing in detail about the AIGFP retention plan by Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley -- a week before Mr. Geithner now says he heard of the plan.

It may be that the full picture was kicked up to him only when a political decision was needed, but by then his one decent choice was to insist on the bonuses' legality. However politically inopportune the bonuses may be, the president only dirtied himself by authorizing a feel-good, bipartisan hate storm aimed at innocent AIG employees. And it's hard to believe Mr. Obama would have done so, or the subsequent spectacle would have unfolded as it did, without Mr. Geithner's seminal prevarications (and we say this fully acknowledging that he's had a rough ride in an inhumanly difficult job).

Barney Frank, who doesn't have the excuse of being stupid, was last seen bullying Mr. Liddy to do what on any other day Mr. Frank would flay Mr. Liddy for doing -- violating the privacy rights of his employees. Charles Grassley? His early bloviating about the duty of AIG executives to kill themselves almost begins to look like a grace note, since it alerted the public to the hyperbolic playacting about to come.

Paul Kanjorski, before running off to host a hearing, proclaimed on CNBC that AIG's Mr. Liddy would be responsible if Congress now failed to summon the political courage to take necessary steps to address the financial crisis.

Pause to let it sink in. Mr. Liddy, who is doing his job with grit and personal sacrifice, is blamed in advance if Congress proves too cowardly to do its own job.

But the biggest lesson here is the old one that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance -- beginning with insistence on the rule of law. Americans clearly cannot trust their elected officials to defend their rights and interests, or care whether justice is served, when the slightest political risk might attach to doing so.

Which brings us back to Mr. Cuomo, whose office has been implicitly threatening to publish names of AIG employees who don't relinquish pay they were contractually entitled to.

Mr. Cuomo is a thug, but at least he reminds us: It can happen here.

Why capitalism works and what happens if it gets broken

My daughter sent me this cause she knew I would love it. I did. I hope you like it as well. This story could be told a million times over. Congress and the President are messing with the only engine driving our economy. It is called capitalism. If the mess enough with it, they will break it. Then we are all totally screwed!!  Enjoy!

Click Here

Holy Budget Deficits Batman!

Yikes, is about all I can say about this WSJ opinion piece.  If you don't get the online subscription to the WSJ, you should.

I will point out Obama's assumptions, and the Congressional Budget Office are both wildly bullish on growth beginning in 2010 and beyond.  Higher than we have ever seen.  AND this budget does NOT include Nationalized Health Care yet.  AND it does not include the fact Dems are now talking about making much of the Stimulus Package permanent, which they intended all along.  Where does all this money come from?  Not from the RICH.  Even the rich don't have this kind of money.   Not even close.  They must print/create it.  Inflation here we come in about 9-18 months.

Obama Sticker Shock - Wall Street Journal

President Obama's 2010 budget looks more astounding by the day, especially when someone other than the White House budget office is analyzing it. The latest case of epic sticker shock came Friday when the Congressional Budget Office published its assessment, which found that the proposals would increase the federal deficit by $2.3 trillion more over 10 years than the White House had claimed.

Hey, what's a little rounding error among friends?

Mr. Obama keeps saying he has "inherited a trillion dollar deficit," which is true. But he's hardly an innocent bystander. CBO shows that the President is seeing that $1 trillion and raising it again and again, as far as the eye can see. In only two months, since the last CBO budget review in January, Democrats have passed laws that increase spending by $134 billion in the last six months of this fiscal year alone, and $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. And that's all before his 2010 budget proposals.

The White House responded that CBO, which is also now run by Democrats, has a more pessimistic economic forecast than do White House economists. But not by much. CBO expects growth this year to decline by 3%, while the White House's rosy scenario has it falling by only 1.2%. Both predict roughly the same growth rates in 2010 (2.9% for CBO vs. 3.2% for the White House) and 2011 (both 4%).

The big difference between the two guesstimates is in spending, with CBO calculating that Mr. Obama's proposals will increase federal outlays by $1.7 trillion more than the White House projects. Entitlement spending -- Medicare, Medicaid, and so on -- will increase by $1.1 trillion. In 2009 and 2010 alone, CBO estimates that Mr. Obama's budget will increase spending by $347 billion more than the White House claims.

As a share of GDP, CBO says this means spending will hit an astounding 28.5% in fiscal 2009, which ends this September, and still be at 25.5% next year, staying at close to 23% to 24% of the economy for the next decade. As CBO dryly notes, this is "above the average of 20.7 percent over the past 40 years." Even CBO's estimate is conservative because it assumes that most of the spending in the stimulus bill will be temporary, though Democrats are already planning to make much of it a permanent part of the budget baseline.

Where does this take the Obama budget deficit? Up into the great beyond. This year's deficit will hit 13.1% of GDP and next year's will still be at 9.6%, assuming a healthy recovery, and then never get below 4.1% for the entire decade. These deficits assume the passage of Mr. Obama's enormous tax increases in 2011 and $629 billion in new cap-and-tax carbon revenues. The share of debt held by the public will double -- to 82.4% in 2019 from 40.8% in 2008 (see nearby chart).

And by the way, all of this is without including the costs of Mr. Obama's plan to offer "free" health care for the middle class. The White House budget includes only a "down payment" on health care, with every serious person figuring it will cost at least $1.2 trillion, and probably more. Incredibly, Democrats on Capitol Hill are, with White House encouragement, talking about jamming health care through Congress with a special procedure that requires only 50 Senate votes.

At least after World War II, spending could, and did, decline rapidly when the country demobilized. In this case, with the bulk of federal spending geared toward income maintenance and transfer payments that have political constituencies, that won't happen. And that is part of Mr. Obama's plan. One unstated but clearly implicit goal of his budget is to put in place spending programs that make ever-more Americans dependent on government and that will require a permanently higher level of taxation to finance. All of this is being done in the name of addressing income inequality.

Republicans have an obligation to slow down this express train to a European welfare state, and to educate Americans so that they put pressure on Democrats who claim to be deficit hawks. If this budget passes in anything close to Mr. Obama's form, Republicans will spend the next two or three generations doing little more than collecting higher taxes from the middle class to finance the Obama revolution.

AIG execs should "kill themselves", Sen Grassley.

By Deal Journal

There is only one thing more outrageous than the outrageous $450 million AIG bonus payout.

And that would be the hysterical, bloodthirsty ravings of our politicians over the matter.

It’s too bad Robespierre is dead. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley’s suggestion that the AIG execs kill themselves would have made him proud.

For those of you that enjoy this kind of populist hurly-burly–and it appears, that is most Americans, there is good news. The revolution will live on! As long as Washington can’t help itself from tinkering with our economic destiny, the outrages will keep coming.

Of course, the AIG bonus saga promises to get even better. Soon we’ll have a constitutional amendment to clawback all Wall Street bonuses. And in our fine nativist tradition, there are bound to be hearings on why all those bad European banks ended up with AIG’s good American money.

The highly anticipated Washington and New York State investigations of John Thain’s farewell bonus payments at Merrill Lynch are now underway. And you can count on an almost never-ending political brouhaha and mediafest over “appropriate” behavior by the TARP banks.

The John Kerry bill to kill golf sponsorships and Christmas parties and the Chris Dodd amendment to curb bonuses were just the start. Wait until Washington really clamps down on Wall Street pay.

It will go on and on.

But soon Wall Street’s outrages will have competition as Washington turns its attention to the doomed U.S. auto industry. The Presidential auto task force may be making noises about delaying the tough decisions on GM and Chrysler. But rest assured, there eventually will be outrage here, too.

Like AIG, we are talking big numbers. Mark Zandi at Moody’s estimates the total taxpayer price tag on a Big Three bailout to run to $75 billion to $125 billion. And certainly there is negligence and incompetence. After all, the U.S. car industry has been dying for decades.

But expect a more nuanced drama in Detroit than on Wall Street. For one, it’s harder to pick out the villains. Will it be the evil CEOs? The intransigent, greedy bondholders? The naysaying Republicans? Or perhaps, even the lazy, overpaid workers?

In a Senate hearing room, the outrage could take almost any direction. Look at Chrysler. The company is owned by a bunch of rich folks. It is run by a rich CEO. A rich guy who once was Treasury Secretary now lobbies for its bailout money.

And now the rich folks, with the UAW’s blessing, have joined hands with a second rate, cash-starved foreign car company. And together, they want to bilk the U.S. taxpayer of another $10 billion or $15 billion to churn out cars nobody wants.

Now, that’s an outrage.

But the Washington populists ought to tread carefully. It’s one thing to stir up the mob, it’s another to control it. Eventually, the public will tire of the old outrages and look for new ones. And suddenly some of the things down in Washington will start to look pretty outrageous, too.

Like Senator Ted Stevens, a convicted felon, receiving $122,000 a year from a government pension. Like Congressman Charlie Rangel, the man most responsible for the U.S. tax code, failing to pay taxes on his Dominican vacation home. Like Rep. Maxine Waters doing favors for a bank in which her husband was a stockholder and former board member.

And like President Obama vowing to rid Washington of earmarks before signing a bill that had almost 9,000 of them.

La revolution devore ses enfants, said French revolutionary leader Georges Danton, before he was guillotined by Robespierre. Three months later, Robespierre himself was executed.

Senator Grassley, please take note.

One term Obama

That is my prediction.

No talented person will work in a company where the President of the US can retroactively and arbitrarily rescind a contract (bonus/commission) because he thinks it excessive.  Any company who has received bailouts will see a mass exodus of all the talent needed for that company to ever turn around.  All the companies bailed out will fail unless they find a way to return the money to govt fast.  Taxpayers will give them trillions more not to fail but they will fail anyway because all the talented people will have left.  This is inevitable. 

Obama et al are either showing a total ignorance as to how companies actually work, or they don’t care because they know they can take advantage of the chaos they have created to ram down the throats of all Americans policies they know Americans would never stomach in rational times.  Chaos has been used many times in history by leaders for the overturn of long standing laws, policies, governments and ways of life.  “Don’t let a good crisis go to waste” said Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff.  These are very smart people taking advantage of the ignorance of the majority of Americans as to how our financial system actually works. 

 

This about a direct attack on “rich people” who this administration has targeted.  They don’t want any more rich people.  They want everyone to basically earn the same.  Earn what government thinks they should earn.  This is a total affront to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Once called “inalienable rights”. 

I predict Obama is a one term President.  Hillary or some other smart Dem or Rep will take advantage of the destruction this man (along with Pelosi, Reid, Frank etc) will cause over the next 2- 3.5 years.  The recession will last his entire administration and he will run out of the ability to blame Bush in the fall of this year.  The chaos will get worse.  Threats to our liberties will grow everyday for the next 3.5 years, hopefully less.  The dems have 1.5 years to have a super majority because many of them will get thrown out in the interim election.  The Republicans then elected stand a very good chance of making things worse unless there is someone with insight and wisdom into how the world really works leading them. 

 

“Government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem.”  Reagan.  Some govt is needed!  Massive government always becomes tyrannical. 

 

Obama Seeks Legal Authority to Stop Future Bonuses

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said he will seek legal authority over the financial system that will give the federal government power to step into contract issues, such as the one that has allowed American International Group Inc. to pay out $165 million in retention bonuses to employees of the tottering insurance giant's financial products group.

The president said he spoke with House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank this morning about granting him "resolution authority" similar to the power the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has over the thrifts it regulates. That would allow his administration to potentially abrogate contracts that it can show does not serve the good of newly regulated entities like AIG.

Reuters

President Obama (right) makes remarks about AIG outside the White House Wednesday as Council of Economic Advisors Director Christina Romer (left) and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner look on.

Mr. Obama said he needs the regulatory power "to allow us proactively to get out in front, to separate bad assets from good in dealing with contracts that may be inappropriate."

Mr. Obama spoke with reporters outside the White House as he headed toward his helicopter en route to Andrews Air Force Base for a trip to California. He acknowledged that the furor around the AIG bonuses had consumed Washington, "and rightfully so because they represent what we all of consider an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds."

But the president urged Americans to look beyond the bonuses, which appear nearly impossible to retrieve, and to consider broader issues of re-regulating the financial system to prevent the kinds of institutional collapses that have dragged the entire economy down with firms like AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (These companies did not fail for lack of regulation!!!  They failed because the value of homes fell upon which the entire house of cards depended.  You cannot regulate the price of homes!!  I am certain they will eventually end up trying to though.- Pat Sullivan)

"We've got to have tools that under our legal authority we can do something about this," he said.

He also expressed his full faith and confidence in his embattled Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, (I predict Geithner will get fired and blamed for much of the chaos.  Right or wrong!  They need more scapegoats to blame to take the focus off the real culprits and real problems!! - Pat) who he said is dealing with more crises from the outset of his tenure than any of his predecessors, perhaps with the exception of the first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton.

"He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand," the president said.

Write to Jonathan Weisman at [email protected]

 

Bonus Rage

See the below WSJ article after reading my opinion.

The whole outrage about bonuses is a rouse to take America’s attention away from things that really do matter!  Like why did we bail these people out to begin with?  Why are we pouring 100’s of Billions more in?  Like why is $20BB given to AIG going to foreign banks?  Why is $15BB going to Goldman Sachs through AIG?  

The fact is, these people receiving bonuses are the people who do the real work that HAS to be done if we have any hope of getting through this crisis the way we have chosen to try to get through it.  You have to have these talented and experienced people, who are used to being paid large $$$.  They could leave and then who would do what they know how to do?  A congressman?  A bureaucrat?  Someone who has no idea what a Credit Default swap actually is??  How it works?  What it is worth?  How to unwind it?  Negotiate it?

 It is a farce and outrage to castigate the very people you need to fix the problem.  These people did not create the problem, their CEO’s and upper mgt did (most often at the urging of laws passed by congress and congressman themselves.)  These people executed the plans laid out by the Execs, most of whom have quit or have been fired!!  It is somewhat like firing a Professional Coach, and then refusing to pay the contracts of the players because they have been losing!  You can’t.  You have to pay their contracts!  It is that simple.  Otherwise contracts and contract law mean nothing. 

If congress and this administration manages to destroy contract law and property rights law in America, then America as we know and love it will cease to exist.

Bonuses Expected at Fannie, Freddie

By JAMES R. HAGERTY and AARON LUCCHETTI

More financial companies that are being propped up with federal money are facing political heat over bonus payments to executives.

Fannie Mae is due to pay retention bonuses of as much $470,000 to $611,000 this year to some executives despite enormous losses at the government-backed mortgage company. Fannie's main rival, Freddie Mac, also plans to pay such bonuses but hasn't yet provided details.

Fannie's bonuses are smaller than ones paid by American International Group Inc. that have caused a political firestorm for that company. Seventy-three AIG executives got retention payments of $1 million or more recently, according to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

But the Fannie bonuses are still considerable and come at a time when Fannie and Freddie are receiving increasing amounts of funding from the Treasury. For 2008, Fannie and Freddie reported combined losses of about $108 billion, largely stemming from a surge in home-mortgage defaults. The U.S. Treasury has agreed to provide as much as $200 billion of capital apiece to Fannie and Freddie in exchange for preferred stock. The two companies have said they will need a combined $60 billion of that money to cover their losses so far.

Bonuses for executives at companies that have received federal backing are "definitely wrong," said U.S. Rep. Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat. "They are rewarding folks who have not done a good job." Rep. Towns also questioned whether executives would bolt if they didn't get retention bonuses. "Where are these people going?" he asked. "Everybody's laying off."  (Stupid politician!!  There are ALWAYS places for talented people to go and earn what they are worth! He is clueless!!)

On Tuesday, Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J) wrote to Treasury Secretary Geithner, asking him to "use every legal means available" to stop $3 billion in previously disclosed retention payments to brokers at the new joint venture being formed by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup's Smith Barney unit.

"These payouts constitute misuse of taxpayer money and are an insult to hardworking families who are saving every penny," wrote Sen. Menendez.

Morgan responded in a statement that the payments aren't bonuses, but loans that won't start paying until 2010 and cannot be kept in full unless the broker stays at the firm for nine years. "The program is necessary because our financial advisers are being poached by competitors," the statement added.

Morgan and Smith Barney's venture will be jointly owned by Morgan and Citigroup, both of which have taken an investment from the U.S. government after they ran into trouble during the credit crisis. But unlike some of the people who have received bonuses at AIG, the brokers getting extra money at the new Morgan Stanley Smith Barney haven't been directly involved with billions of dollars in write-downs at their parent companies.

James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, of FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, said the bonuses they are paying are "critical" to retain people needed to support the mortgage      market and work on foreclosure-prevention efforts. After the companies' chief executives were ousted in September, "it would have been catastrophic to lose the next layers down and other highly experienced employees," he said. Mr. Lockhart added that compensation has declined for many employees because other types of bonuses weren't paid last year and "past stock grants are virtually worthless."

A recent Fannie securities filing says that Michael Williams, the company's chief operating officer, is due to receive cash retention awards of $611,000 this year, atop a similar award of $260,000 in 2008. His base salary is $676,000 a year.

The company also disclosed plans to pay retention awards this year of $517,000 to David Hisey and $470,000 each to Thomas Lund and Kenneth Bacon. All three of them are executive vice presidents.

The bonuses this year are to be paid in two installments, one in April and the second in November. Those installments are to be paid only if the executives remain in their posts at the payment dates.

Hundreds of other Fannie employees also are eligible for retention awards, but the company disclosed only the largest of the bonuses. It said there are no plans for a retention bonus for the chief executive officer, Herbert Allison, who elected to serve without any salary or bonus in 2008.

Freddie has a similar retention-bonus plan but hasn't yet disclosed the amounts due to be paid to its top executives. That disclosure is due by the end of April.

The regulator seized management control of Fannie and Freddie in September under a legal process called conservatorship. That resulted in a crash of the companies' stock prices to less than $1 as investors concluded that the companies will be unable to pay dividends to common shareholders again for years, if ever, as they struggle to support preferred-stock dividend payments to the Treasury. Until last year, Fannie and Freddie executives were compensated largely in the form of common stock, no longer an appealing option.

Mike Huckabee & Chuck Norris

(Posted by Patrick Sullivan Jr.)

It was over a year ago that I nearly had a convulsion while reading Chuck Norris-isms...it's great to see a few of those turned into a political ad.