Free Money in the USA

Don't you kind of feel like someone at AIG needs to go to jail? Or maybe lots of people at AIG need to go to jail?

Well, while we wait for President Obama and team to swoop down and stop the bad people from stealing the money that we don't have anymore, we might as well dance! Here is my new song "Free Money In The USA." The song (complete with click track count in) is available as a free download on my MySpace page at:

www.myspace.com/paulhipp

Please feel free to download it and make your own video then send me the link to your video -- I'll post the best one on Huffington Post!

The lyrics are below the video which is here...

FREE MONEY IN THE USA

I cant pay my bills, my cards are maxxed
but the same old greedy banker hacks
are taking million dollar bonuses from my tax
Busting laws and breaking backs
AIGee your dumb said the man in the suit
With his bonuses and his sack of loot
The same guys who caused the train to crash
Are the only people still making cash

AIG I'm dumb FDIC my thumb
Shoved up my BofA
Free money in the USA
I got no place to stay
I lost my 401k
Now it's all gone away
Free money in the USA

Binding legal obligations
In a broke and worthless paper nation
one six five million in bonus pay
Free money in the USA
The first banker to press that case
may win in court but will one day face
an angry mob that he will meet
coming through the gates of easy street

Cancel all bonus's or put them in jail
We're all to goddamn big to fail

With so many people out of work
I hear some wealthy banker jerk
Say they can't attract the brightest and best
Like the ones who got us into this mess
Without hundreds of millions in retention pay
Free money in the USA
Go down to the unemployment line
There's a lot of people who'd do just fine
To right this ship and fix your bank
For a decent wage and a hearty thanks
for some honest pay for an honest day
Fuck aig fuck BofA-holes

© Paul Hipp 2009

www.paulhipp.com

Comments

[SwampeastMike]

09:04 PM on 03/22/2009

While I occasion the thought, jail is neither warranted nor appropriate except in the most extreme, Madoff-like, circumstance.

Even if you could find and convict of crimes, it would take vast amounts of fruitless effort to put them in jails that are already too full while enriching lawyers who are already too fat but always willing to take your money.

And should crimes be found we would face a new inquisition where mere association is tantamount to guilt with great numbers of complacent but innocent people living in fear.

There is no pleasure in sending people to jail--if you don't believe me talk to a judge.

Justice however is quite mercurial *if only we will let it occur*.

I find great solace in a hedge fund manager who delivers pizza, even if I do suspect that their service would earn a particularly good tip.

You offer a nice ditty, nothing more.

[Lionsden]

08:23 PM on 03/22/2009

AIG is a red herring.

Those who just spent over a trillion dollars of money we don't have, should go to jail.

[mountainweb]

02:54 PM on 03/22/2009

You have to realize that we cannot pass a retroactive law that makes a total lack of ethics punishable by jail time but for sure we can demand these crooks be fired and not pay them anymore of the taxpayers money. Then, remember this lack of control has been going on for at least 16 years, we step back and make sure that banks can ONLY be banks. A key parental control, never give a 6 year old the key to the cookie jar and we have to treat these people like 6 year olds.....

[research]

05:33 PM on 03/22/2009

They are guilty of Fraud.

You don't have to break any other laws to be found of fraud.

And selling insurance without the money to pay claims,

Is Fraud.

See my profile for details.

[mlr710]

06:56 PM on 03/22/2009

Who did they defraud?

[Iscarius]

02:08 PM on 03/22/2009

Maybe, but more so I feel like our politicians giving out billions and trillions of dollars to these companies and to foreign banks should go to jail for treason.

[PPatt]

01:04 PM on 03/22/2009

Dude, your premise is sadly misguided.

Sure I feel like someone at AIG should go to jail but feeling and legality are two different things. I'd much rather see us become a nation of laws again. If it only took my feelings feelings then you might be doing 10-20 days yourself for writing a blog post that focused on the side-show rather than the real issues.

The point is that we need the laws in place so that those who do what many in AIG are doing will go to jail. Furthermore there need to be laws in place that will prevent the sort of economic meltdown that we are now witnessing....so that those who gamble with others moeny will be in violation of something.

We need awareness in place of who dismantled the laws and regulations that had protected us from these things. Since they dismantled the firewall that protected families and the elderly abiding by standard legal and political process we should give them the analog of the death penalty...vote them out.

If we aren't smart enough to do that, even to those who aided and abetted the meltdown despite now leading the charge against the bonuses, then we deserve what we get.

It's really that simple, isn't it?

Trial by feeling would not be so good. Cross me on a bad day and you'd get the death penalty. I assure you, you would not want that.

[PPatt]

01:11 PM on 03/22/2009

OK, I admit it was kind of funny....

[research]

03:27 PM on 03/22/2009

Selling insurance WITHOUT the money to pay claims is fraud.

See my profile for more details.

[research]

03:26 PM on 03/22/2009

Selling Insurance is Fraud, no matter what the particular laws are that made it look legal.

There is an overriding legal concept of bad faith, and intent to harm, that has often been used to "piece the corporate veil" or convict in spite of technically having followed the "regulations. Laws are more general and morally based than regulations.

AIG Swaps sellers are guilty of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

[Melanie Blades]

04:49 PM on 03/22/2009

Completely agree with your posting. But it's not just AIG, or Fanny Mae, or Lehman Brothers, or Solomon Brothers that have 'mismanaged' or 'miscalculated' their participation, the Federal Reserve is the elephant in the room that no one talks about. Moreover, the Federal Reserve has tried to wash itself of ALL responsibility for the immense fraud perpetrated; There are rules regarding the fiscal behavior that the Federal Reserve is supposed to uphold and ALL of those rules have been broken and yet, the Federal Reserve, which is really a cluster of privately owned banks, is, in the end, where the buck stops, since they are the United States's central bank, responsible for the United States money supply and credit markets. We need to examine the Federal Reserve very closely, its role in not just our current economic woes, but every single financial debacle that has taken place in the last thirty years.

It would make for very interesting reading to find out exactly why our Federal Income Tax goes to a PRIVATE Institution that is beyond the reach of Congress and the President, and is not, as most people assume, a FEDERAL AGENCY.

[OVERSITE]

12:39 PM on 03/22/2009

paulson under oath please


hank boy took 200billion

[OVERSITE]

12:38 PM on 03/22/2009

hank paulson needs to go under oath


he never told us aig miney going to goldmansacks


he picked aig board member to be head of aig


its another chaney conflict of interest

[eden4barack08]

12:35 PM on 03/22/2009

Let's start with Cassano.

[Zengaman]

02:56 PM on 03/19/2009

Hilarious .....and true.

[DuncanONeil]

12:38 PM on 03/19/2009

Go to jail? Maybe -- maybe not. But certainly not for the reasons you suggest. I am really tired of all of the time, energy, and money being wasted on AIG paying its employees. When people tried to complain about the waste in the Omnibus Bill they were told don't worry it is just a pittance. Yet these payroll disbursements (less than one tenth of one percent) to AIG employees deserve Congressional hearings?? What about the nearly 70% that AIG gave to other companies, including some $30 billion to a foreign bank???

[AngelaQuattrano]

12:41 PM on 03/22/2009

You can't get away with it that easy. This is a symptom of the problem, the first sign that many people have seen that the system is rotten to the core. CEO's and other executives not just at bailed-out corporations, but at all large corporations in the US have been looting their companies for a decade or more and walking away when the books no longer balance. The sense of entitlement is overwhelming, as is their bizarre notion that we are all a bunch of losers who deserve to be taken for everything we own. Washington is slowly waking up to the fact that (surprise!) the public does not feel this way. It's about time, and I don't care what the trigger was.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/20/711183/-The-root-cause-of-the-crisis

[thegirlnextdoor]

11:22 AM on 03/19/2009

Hay, I think I love this guy!

And yeah, .. jail time big time.
They are thieves.

[KillTheMessenger]

01:05 PM on 03/19/2009

See, that's the kind of talk that never made me fall for "the girl next door".

:-)

[Katalin]

06:04 AM on 03/19/2009

yes, they deserve to go to jail. i was listening the Congressional hearings yesterday. They mentioned excuses for the bail out that AIG is big to fail. Well, that was the problem what caused this crisis: too big. there is no excuses for bonuses. When a corporate is in trouble, investors money, 401k should be given back first and after that let them fail. The management is for to take the responsibility, in this case they should be the risk takers, the losers, not the investors.

[CAPTAINSKIPPY]

01:32 AM on 03/19/2009

What a great country! Where else could you get a million dollar bonus for destroying a corrupt company full of corrupt executives?

[suzc]

10:15 AM on 03/20/2009

How about in Congress? Giving themselves million-dollar salaries/benefits/retirements for destroying a hard-working nation full of hard-working good people in order to fund corrupt companies full of corrupt executives?????

[eden4barack08]

12:37 PM on 03/22/2009

Which Congress has million dollar salaries?

[sinope]

02:37 PM on 03/22/2009

Dig the 27th Amendment, bro.

[TXfemmom]

12:43 AM on 03/19/2009

If the government looks very closely, the CEO's of most of these banks, investment banks, AIG, and hedge funds, along with much of their high-ranking executives should all end up in prison. In reality, they were all running huge Ponzi schemes and criminal organizations.

[Dolmance]

12:01 AM on 03/19/2009

Barrack Obama is the best man in America for the job of President. But it's too bad he can't trade places with Vladimir Putin. Because Russia needs a competent hand that's gentle, and the US needs a piece of nasty work who truly loves his country - someone who would take a few of these disgusting parasites at AIG and others like them along with their sense of self entitlement and throw them in the deepest, darkest pit forever. That would scare the others into doing the right thing - divesting themselves of every ill gotten gain in their possession and shutting up forever.

[KillTheMessenger]

01:05 PM on 03/19/2009

You greatly underestimate Putin.