Anderson Newman

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

March 19, 2009

AC on AIG
Anderson Cooper, host of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” broadcast live Wednesday night from J.B. Bamboozles bar in Warren. Minutes before the show went live, Cooper fielded questions from patrons in the crowded bar.

“What do you think of the AIG crap?” one patron asked. “I think ‘crap’ was a good term for it,” Cooper responded. Cooper said that he’s “still trying to wrap his head around this thing” and he questioned the reticence to renegotiate AIG contracts and require employees of that company to return their bonuses. “It seems like the government didn’t have a problem having folks here (in Detroit) renegotiate their contracts.” The applause was immediate.

Cooper’s incredulity on the contract hypocrisy out of Washington was echoed by patrons in the bar Wednesday night. Hypocrisy that seems especially galling considering the Big Three went through a grilling in order to secure federal assistance, while companies like AIG were given significantly more assistance and received significantly less scrutiny from Congress. “No one sitting around here is going to make a million dollars in 10 years,” Jonathan Rich, 35, a General Motors engineer told me, “the banks are getting 10, 20 times more help for a problem they are responsible for creating.”

Good points. Gee, maybe if Congress had given AIG executives the intensive interrogation that they gave the heads of the Big Three, someone might have caught the bonus loophole in the fine print of the economic stimulus package.

Cooper couldn’t have picked a better location to talk about the AIG bonus swindle and Congress’ baffling double standard on contract renegotiations than a bar with “Bamboozles” in its name.


Separated at birth?
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Is it just me, or is Anderson Cooper starting to look an awful lot like Paul Newman? Minus the red-eye effect from my crummy digital camera, of course.
[Peter's NOTE: I removed the red-eye; but I couldn't make it any lighter.]