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Former top executives of insurance giant American International Group Inc. were on the receiving end of a verbal smackdown Tuesday as a congressional panel probed the chain of events that forced the government to bail out the conglomerate.
Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who ran AIG for 38 years until 2005, again blamed the company's financial woes on his successors, former CEOs Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad. They, in turn, cast much of the blame on accounting rules that forced AIG to take tens of billions of dollars in losses stemming from exposure to toxic mortgage-related...
President Bush says the economic meltdown has brought tough times for many Americans. But he pledged that "we're going to come through this."
"We have been through tough times before and we're going to come through this again," the president said Tuesday. He said the heart of the problem is a credit crunch that has squeezed businesses and families. He said his administration took action to prevent a painful and deep recession.
Bush spoke at an office supply company in the Washington suburb of Chantilly, Va., after talks earlier in the day with European leaders. Bush presse...
President Bush has reached out to European leaders, urging coordinated action to address the global financial crisis. The White House says Bush is open to the idea of a leaders' summit on the economy.
The White House said the president spoke Tuesday with leaders of Britain, France and Italy about measures the United States is taking and the importance of countries working together. The G-7 finance ministers will meet in Washington at the end of this week and the White House says Bush is open to the idea of a leaders' summit on the economy, as suggested by French President Nicolas...
The federal judge overseeing Ted Stevens' corruption trial says he saw a lawyer making signals from the crowd to the lead witness against the Alaska senator.
Bill Allen is the lead witness against Stevens.
During Allen's testimony Monday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said defense attorney Robert Bundy was making signals to his client from the gallery and the judge demanded he stop. Sullivan said Tuesday he was lucky he didn't send him "out the back door with the marshals."
Bundy's law partner, Creighton Magid, said Tuesday his partner "vehemently" denied maki...
Even when he thought no one was listening but his old friend Bill Allen, Sen. Ted Stevens repeatedly proclaimed his innocence in an Alaskan corruption investigation in between lectures on staying healthy and keeping out of prison on obstruction of justice charges.
But it turned out that Allen had already turned state's evidence and was helping the Justice Department by secretly taping telephone calls with the Republican icon, part of the featured evidence in Stevens' corruption trial in the nation's capital.
Stevens, 84, is charged with lying on financial disclosure forms to ...
The government's rescue of American International Group Inc. last month is getting a critical eye from lawmakers examining the chain of events that forced a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.
Three former AIG chief executive officers, including its largest individual shareholder, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, are scheduled to testify Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The hearing is the second in two days into financial excesses and regulatory mistakes that have spooked stock and credit markets and heightened fears about a global recession....
The government is weighing a bold plan to buy massive amounts of unsecured short-term debts in a dramatic effort to break through a credit clog that is imperiling the economy.
The Federal Reserve is working with the Treasury Department on the plan to buy "commercial paper," a short-term financing mechanism that many companies rely on to finance their day-to-day operations, such as purchasing supplies or making payrolls, according to a person with knowledge of the plan. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is still being put together.
The market for this...
The now-bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers arranged millions in bonuses for fired executives as it pleaded for a federal lifeline, lawmakers learned Monday, as Congress began investigating what went so wrong on Wall Street to prompt a $700 billion government bailout.
The first in a series of congressional hearings on the roots of the financial meltdown yielded few major revelations about Lehman's collapse, and none about why government officials, as they scrambled to avert economic catastrophe, declined to rescue the flagging company while injecting tens of billions of...
An estimated 17,000 deceased U.S. prisoners of war could be awarded Purple Hearts under a new Pentagon policy announced Monday.
Purple Hearts are awarded to soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines wounded by enemy action. But the awards have been denied in the past to POWs who died in captivity if it could not be proven they had been wounded or killed by the enemy.
The revised policy announced Monday by the Defense Department presumes such deaths were the result of enemy action unless compelling evidence is presented to the contrary.
The new policy is retroactive to Dec....
As Wall Street reeled and global markets plunged, President Bush on Monday said the U.S. economy is going to be "just fine" in the long run. But he cautioned that the massive rescue plan will take time to work.
On another jittery day in the financial markets, the president made two rounds of unscheduled comments on the economy _ first after meeting with small-business owners in San Antonio, and then at the top of a speech in Cincinnati about judicial nominees.
In both cases, he defended the $700 billion economic bailout plan as one that won't just help Wall Street, but everyd...
In October 2006, a longtime loyalist of Sen. Ted Stevens called him up with a big problem: The FBI, he said, was breathing down his neck about a makeover of the senator's mountain cabin.
Stevens responded by cautioning the friend, Bill Allen, that they "ought to lay really low right now" and "stick this out together."
Unbeknownst to the veteran Alaskan lawmaker, Allen had already agreed to work with investigators and secretly tape their phone calls _ evidence made public for the first time Monday at Steven's corruption trial.
Stevens, 84, is charged with lying on fin...
President Bush says the $700 billion plan to save the teetering U.S. economy will take some time to work.
After meeting with small-business owners at an old-fashioned soda shop in San Antonio, Texas, the president sought patience from a jittery country.
Congress last week approved a massive plan of federal intervention that allows the government to buy up devalued assets from financial companies in hopes of unlocking frozen credit lines.
Bush said he signed the bill last week, but that "it's going to take awhile" to get the program working fully and effectively. He call...
Days from becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Lehman Brothers steered millions to departing executives even while pleading for a federal rescue, Congress was told Monday.
As well, executives who feared for their bonuses in the company's last months were told not to worry, according to documents cited at a congressional hearing. One executive said he was embarrassed when employees suggested that Lehman executives forgo bonuses, and cracked: "I'm not sure what's in the water."
The first hearing into what caused the nation's financial markets to collapse last mon...
President Bush almost made it through his two terms without visiting his boyhood hometown. He broke the more than 7-year, 8-month streak on Saturday for a quick and lucrative fundraising stop in this West Texas oil patch.
The lunchtime event, closed to the public and press, attracted a big crowd to Republican Rep. Mike Conaway's home benefited a joint fund set up by the national Republican Party and the House GOP's political arm. Between the Midland fundraiser and a second set for Monday in San Antonio, Bush was helping draw in about $1 million for the party.
He stayed less...
Three days after providing a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, Congress is holding its first hearing into what caused the nation's financial markets to collapse last month.
Monday's hearing by the House Oversight and and Government Reform Committee will focus on Lehman Brothers, the giant investment bank that declared bankruptcy just three weeks ago, setting off a panic that within days had President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asking Congress to pass the rescue plan.
The star witness is expected to be Lehman chief executive officer Richard Fuld. He is sure...
The Supreme Court opens a new term Monday. The first order of business is expected to be the denials of hundreds of appeals, followed by arguments over limits on lawsuits against tobacco companies.
The justices had roughly 2,000 appeals before them at their private conference last week. They accepted 10 for argument over the next year. Hundreds of others will be formally turned down when the justices convene in their marble courtroom at 10 a.m.
The first case to be argued is a dispute over whether federal regulation of cigarettes prevents smokers from suing tobacco companies...
U.S. and NATO allies will embrace fledgling Eastern European nations during international meetings this week, in a what will be seen as a sharp message to Russia that further aggression in the region will not be tolerated.
Coming on the heels of Russia's invasion of Georgia in August, nervous NATO allies will likely tread a bit lightly, torn between their desire to display a show of strength and their worries about inflaming tensions with an increasingly belligerent Russian bear.
Senior defense officials traveling with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the NATO meeting in...
Attorneys for Sen. Ted Stevens are again trying for an early end to their client's corruption trial.
Stevens' lawyers on Sunday renewed their push for a mistrial, accusing government prosecutors of manipulating the story of their star witness, oil pipeline magnate Bill Allen, to undermine the defense.
In an initial response, prosecutors wrote, "Contrary to all of the theatrics and hyperbole from the defense, no one has attempted to hide evidence or hold back any discoverable item."
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the government to file its full response b...
Attorneys for Sen. Ted Stevens are again trying for an early end to their client's corruption trial.
Stevens' lawyers on Sunday renewed their push for a mistrial, accusing government prosecutors of manipulating the story of their star witness, oil pipeline magnate Bill Allen, to undermine the defense.
In an initial response, prosecutors wrote, "Contrary to all of the theatrics and hyperbole from the defense, no one has attempted to hide evidence or hold back any discoverable item."
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the government to file its full response b...
The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with arguments over limits on lawsuits against tobacco companies.
The court will consider whether federal regulation of cigarettes prevents smokers from suing tobacco companies under state law for allegedly deceptive advertising of "light" cigarettes.
The case grew out of a lawsuit by three Maine residents against Altria Group Inc. and its Philip Morris USA Inc. subsidiary under the state's law against unfair marketing practices.
The company says a federal law on cigarette labeling and advertising rules out such lawsuits becau...
The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with arguments over limits on lawsuits against tobacco companies.
The court will consider whether federal regulation of cigarettes prevents smokers from suing tobacco companies under state law for allegedly deceptive advertising of "light" cigarettes.
The case grew out of a lawsuit by three Maine residents against Altria Group Inc. and its Philip Morris USA Inc. subsidiary under the state's law against unfair marketing practices.
The company says a federal law on cigarette labeling and advertising rules out such lawsuits becau...
The law is a guide to an orderly society, an American cardinal said an a church service Sunday that included five Supreme Court justices ahead of the start of their new term.
At the annual Red Mass, Cardinal John Patrick Foley told an audience of government officials, ambassadors, academics and members of the capital's legal community about his decision to attend seminary rather than law school.
Foley said he never regretted the decision _ assisted by his voluntary teaching of religious studies to special education students _ but that he sees many similarities between his...
Bill Allen affectionately referred to the outings as "boot camp."
It was a time when he and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, would retreat together to a desert location where they gave up hard liquor and heavy food for wine and light meals. The idea, Allen said, was to do lots of walking, "trying to get off some pounds."
The self-made multimillionaire last week painted that postcard of his once-loyal friendship with the patriarch of Alaskan politics. But the portrait emerged at a chilly reunion in an uncomfortable setting more than 3,000 miles from their northern stomping grounds...
Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
In the days before and after the deadly storm, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Louisiana and Texas. The...
AP News
As a state senator, Democrat Barack Obama awarded $75,000 in government grants to a Chicago social service organization led by a rabbi who is also his wife's cousin, records show.
In 1999, Obama arranged for $50,000 for adult literacy and counseling services offered on Chicago's South Side by a group called Blue Gargoyle. A $25,000 grant for the group's youth services followed the next year.
The group's executive director when the grants were awarded was Capers Funnye, a South Side rabbi and Michelle Obama's first cousin once removed.
Funnye (pronounced fun-NAY) said Monday there was nothing improper about the way Blue Gargoyle obtained the grants. Obama did not encourage him to apply for the money, he said, and Funnye denied using family connections to pressure Obama to approve the application. Read More...
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