RUSH: All right, I’m going to try one more time on these bonuses. Now, I know, I know this. I’m going to make an argument, I want to make a point about this founded totally in logic. My logic is irrefutable. I am right in what I’m going to say. Ninety-nine percent of you are going to think I’m wrong. Ninety-nine, maybe 95% of you are going to think I’ve lost it or you’re going to think that I’ve got some ulterior motive for saying what I’m saying, and in a few months, weeks, maybe years, something will happen to you, and you’ll say, ‘Gosh, you know, Rush was right a month or year or so ago.’ I realize here that what I’m going to say, you know, logic and common sense are in short supply in much of our country today since we thrive and live on emotions. About these AIG bonuses — by the way, welcome back, I am Rush Limbaugh, America’s Real Anchorman, the truth detector, and the Doctor of Democracy. A highly trained broadcast specialist, don’t try this at home or even in a karaoke bar. Well, the great make it look easy. There he goes, there he goes, a pompous braggart. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
After I give you the irrefutable logic on the AIG bonuses, I then want to talk to you about Nathan. I wish I still had Nathan on the phone. Nathan said he wants to earn $250,000 a year, but he’s so caught up in what the AIG bonus people are getting that he thinks that money is not theirs, should come back to taxpayers, so forth and so on. I want to tell you how people get paid in this country. But before we get to that, AIG bonuses. I know the argument. The argument is that we need to get the bonus money back from the schlubs because these are the people who ran the company into the ground, and so they’re supposed to have more sensitivity to the use of taxpayer money in the form of bailouts. These are the people that ran AIG into the ground, and so… what? Let me try it this way. AIG, think of them just as an insurance company here, maybe they dabble in some other investment products that they sell and make themselves, but it has been determined by the powers that be that AIG is too big to fail, if AIG fails, we’ve got problems out the wazoo. So the decision was made to keep AIG running. AIG was given money, federal money, taxpayer money to stay in business, which means to keep doing what they were doing. ‘No Rush, no, no, they had to change.’ No, nobody told them they had to change.
The money was given with no strings, folks. The money was given. There was no accountability to any of this TARP money, to any of these banks or companies that got bailed out, none. So somebody from on high decides we want AIG to keep operating. What do they do? Well, they sell stuff. They sell insurance. They sell who knows what else. Now, all of a sudden after we have made the decision that it would be calamitous for them to fail so we have to keep them in business, we have to keep them doing what they were doing. ‘No, Rush, no. What they were doing led them to being bailed out.’ No, folks. If what they were doing caused them to fail, we should have let them fail. If they were behaving so badly, if they were so incompetent that they were running their business into the ground, we shoulda let them run it into the ground, closed the door, shut down, fire everybody, lay everybody off, and move on. We didn’t do that. We said, ‘We want you guys hanging around. We want you guys in business. We want you guys doing what you’re doing.’ They said, ‘Okay,’ put their hands out, took $173 billion. At that point, it’s over. We have made the decision to keep ’em in business. That means they should do what they do.
In this case, they have employees and they pay those employees according to contracts. These contracts stipulate bonuses for certain performance criteria that are met. So now all of a sudden, after deciding that AIG is too big to fail, it’s got to stay in business. We give them the money to stay in business, then when they do what they do, all of a sudden there’s hell to pay? Forget the emotion here. Forget the sentimentality. They’re supposed to be sensitive and to understand it’s taxpayer money. What are they supposed to do with it? If they don’t use the money to operate as they were, are they supposed to sit on the money? Are they supposed to write checks to us? Are they just a clearinghouse to give money back to us? We keep saying it’s our money that bailed ’em out, and it is, but what are they supposed to do, give it back to us? In which case if they do they’re not going to have any, in which case, they can’t stay in business. So the decision was made by the powers that be, AIG has to stay in business. Then when they do what they do everybody gets their underwear in a wad.
Now, I don’t expect very many of you to agree with me on this. It would be no different than if we bail out McDonald’s. Are they supposed to stop selling Big Macs after we bail ’em out? Or are they supposed to give away Chicken McNuggets? If we bail out McDonald’s, what are they supposed to do? We want them to stay in business, want them to sell Big Macs, make ’em and sell ’em, give ’em away, whatever. And what happens if McDonald’s gives some people raises? Forget the dollars involved. What if McDonald’s gave some people some bonuses? Are we going to demand the money back? ‘Rush, you’re missing the point. McDonald’s was not in trouble.’ I know. But it’s the same principle involved. If we want a company to stay in business doing what it’s doing, and we give them the money because if they fail it’s calamitous, then why the hell are we complaining and griping about what they do? We’ve just made the decision we want them to keep doing it. I’m talking about the government. The government is out there berating, Andrew Cuomo subpoenaing all these names. This is ridiculous here.
Either let ’em fail ’cause they’re running a rotten business, or admit that after we bail ’em out they’re going to be who they are. And while you’re thinking about this $165 million dollars in bonuses, don’t forget the $93 billion, over half of what they got, that they gave to other banks, mostly in Europe.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: John in Milford, Michigan. Hi. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: My question is about insurance as an institution or a business, or whatever it is, in general and how it ever came into being to begin with.
RUSH: Well, now, I know that. I actually know the history of insurance. I’m having a mental block on how it came about. It came about because of the market, people wanted to insure themselves against loss. Insurance right now is one of these things you almost have to buy it, I mean the government forces you to have car insurance.
CALLER: That’s my question. I’m not sure how such a concept could even be — you know, you mentioned a Bugs Bunny cartoon or a Warner Brothers cartoon earlier, and it reminded me of another one. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the one with Daffy Duck as an insurance salesman trying to sell Porky Pig a policy. It’s funnier than anything, but those were made in the forties, and I began to think, how long has this been going on?
RUSH: Insurance has been around since biblical times.
CALLER: Indeed.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: No matter how I look at it —
RUSH: I know what you’re thinking. You gotta buy car insurance. Then you have an accident, and you file a claim, then they pay it, then they’ll cancel you, you’ve got no insurance. Your house burns down, somehow it’s your fault, they pay it, maybe third of it, and then they cancel you. You think it’s a racket, what do they do with all the money? They don’t have all the money that they’re insuring all people. That’s why they have to make investments with the money that you pay them.