With Each Hearing, the Need for More Financial Oversight Becomes Clearer

POGO wants to congratulate Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) for continuing to hold oversight hearings while the House is out of session and most members of Congress have run to campaign in their home districts.  Yesterday's hearing about the causes and effects of the American International Group's (AIG) $85 billion bailout revealed that 70 of the company's top performers were rewarded with a week at St. Regis Resort--running up a tab of $440,000 (that's $6,285.71 per person).  The bailout money is also being spent to pay AIG's former financial products manager, Joseph Cassano, $1 million a month in consulting fees and a $5 million performance bonus for former CEO Martin J. Sullivan.  And to think that we thought that the government had problems with personnel performance management. 

This hearing and reports like the ones from the SEC IG that POGO's Beverley Lumpkin blogged about yesterday make it clear that everyone--including POGO--needs to ramp up oversight of the financial sector.  You don't have to be a hedge-fund manager--though it can certainly help--to identify gross mismanagement or a clear conflict of interest.

Click below to watch a clip from the hearing:

-- Mandy Smithberger