BP says a new cap has stopped oil from leaking into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since April.
BP has been slowly dialing down the flow as part of a test on a new cap. Engineers are now monitoring the pressure to see if the broken well holds. NPR
Claims will begin to be paid in August:
With the disaster nearly three months old, the man in charge of the $20 billion fund set up by BP to pay individuals and business for their losses said it will start making payments in early August.
Ken Feinberg, who was in charge of the compensation paid to families of victims in the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, told a meeting of government officials in Louisiana that he expected a seamless transition from BP management of claims to his administration.
Kenneth Feinberg, in charge of administering the BP money to gulf coast residents, has a tough job. A lot of people are lined up with valid claims and a lot of greedy people are lined up trying to take away money from those with valid claims. Feinberg says it will take 30 days to get claims paid. This summer, Feinberg will stop being the "pay czar" to focus solely on BP claims administration. Feinberg has been supervising executive pay of companies that were bailed out, including AIG, GM and Chrysler.
David Gregory was very excited this morning, like he was on some kind of energy drink or something. He flitted from person to person trying to find his answer. The truth about the oil spill is that, like everything else, politics has gotten in the way of truth. Gregory can't get the answer he's looking for because no one is willing to tell state the facts because everyone has politics to think of. So truth can never be found. Mary Landrieu has it about right when she said Obama's cabinet people were there from day one, Obama wasn't on the scene, but he was involved. Politics took over soon after that because Obama didn't move to the scene fast enough to have his photo taken there. The biggest irony of the oil spill is that republicans always say that business does everything better and yet this is a clear example that business doesn't do everything better. A company's job is to what's best for its shareholders, and the majority of companies still aren't on board with the philosophy that doing what's best for the environment and society is doing what's best for its shareholders. Gregory also showed a quote from an interview of Tony Hayward in the Times of London in May that Hayward expects a lot of illegitimate claims because it's America:
“This is America — come on,” the well-tailored head of London-based BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, told the Times of London. “We’re going to have lots of illegitimate claims. We all know that.”
Hayward is right that there will be plenty of illegitimate claims, but Hayward didn't use much tact in saying it in a derogatory manner. We all know that people who have no rights to the BP claim money will try to take money from others who are deserving because they have hired lawyers to get their share. Compared to Britain, Americans like to sue, which drives up costs of everything for all of us.
Another thing that's nutty is the endless pursuit of trying to come up with the number of gallons of oil that is flowing into the ocean. One gallon is too much. After that, it doesn't matter. A lot of oil is flowing into the ocean. We'll pay more consequences than we know.
Just last week, the media was irresponsibly reporting that BP could go bankrupt. Now, BP is putting $20 billion in escrow to pay claims. That's a year's profit for BP. Kenneth Feinberg will be overseeing the account:
BP executives, including Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO Tony Hayward and BP U.S. boss Lamar McKay, attended the meeting with Obama and other top administration officials that was scheduled to last for 20 minutes.
The independent fund will be led by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In his current role, Feinberg is known as Obama's "pay czar," setting salary limits for companies getting the most aid from a $700 billion government bailout fund. msnbc
Obama's meeting with BP execs has run over time. Obama is expected to make the announcement any minute now. Here is a live stream:
American International Group Inc. and four other companies overseen by Obama administration paymaster Kenneth Feinberg were ordered to cut cash compensation to top executives by 33 percent from last year.
Total pay in 2010, including cash, will fall by about 15 percent for 119 executives at AIG, General Motors Co., GMAC Inc., Chrysler Group LLC and Chrysler Financial Corp., Feinberg said at a press briefing in Washington today. Still, his rulings showed 69 of them will get $1 million or more, including long- term restricted stock payable only in future years. Bloomberg
Also:
Pay czar Kenneth Feinberg also said he is asking 419 companies that received bailout money to provide details of compensation they received at the height of the financial crisis at the end of 2008 and early 2009. NPR
Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie have a new show, The Daily Rundown. Eh. We need fewer people with opinions taking up air and more people digging up facts and analyzing. The topic of this video: bank bonuses. People need to understand that people go to work on Wall Street for the sole purpose of making money. That's what they care about. Greed motivates these people.
Who cares what kind of bonuses they get so long as banks are regulated so that their failures don't affect the rest of us. That's where we need to be focusing--regulating the heck out of the banks. If you don't like the bonuses bankers are getting move your money in smaller banks. Arianna Huffington is leading that worthy charge. Find a new bank here. Pay czar Kenneth Feinberg on the bonuses.
American International Group Inc. has lost a top executive due to the government's limits on executive pay.
AIG said Wednesday that vice chairman and general counsel Anastasia Kelly has resigned, effective immediately.
Kelly left because of the reduction in her base salary that was mandated by the government's pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, AIG said.
Companies like AIG that hold government bailout funds are subject to restrictions including limits on executive pay; in AIG's case, that's the insurer's 100 highest-paid employees. The government has given AIG a bailout package worth up to $182.5 billion in exchange for an 80 percent stake in the New York-based company. MSNBC
Pay Czar (that's right Glenn Beck, Czar) Kenneth Feinberg (whose official title is Treasury Department's Special Master for Executive Compensation) places caps on executives at CitiGroup, GM, GMAC, AIG.
President Obama to Sign Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act into Law
Washington, DC - On Thursday, October 22, at 2:15 pm EST, the President will sign into law the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act, which guarantees a timely and predictable flow of funding for Department of Veterans Affairs medical care. He will deliver brief remarks and be joined by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki, Members of Congress, and leaders from various Veterans Service Organizations in the East Room Ceremony.
What the legislation does:
-- This legislation will provide timely, predictable funding for veterans' health care by requiring Congress to approve a health care budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at least one year in advance. -- It removes partisanship and politics from the veterans funding process forever. -- It has been a top priority for leading veterans groups for decades. -- This will help to end inadequate planning and rationed care in the VA health care system. -- This critical legislation was IAVA's top Legislative Priority for 2009 and the focus of our annual 'Storm the Hill' campaign at the start of the year. Veterans from all over the country worked for ten months to make this happen. reuters
If you ask me, these execs ought to work for minimum wage until they get their house in order. Think of the lessons they'd learn. Obama's pay czar (that's right Beck: CZAR) is set to order pay cuts:
The Obama administration will soon order the nation's biggest bailed-out companies to drastically cut the pay packages of 175 top executives, a senior administration official confirmed to CNN Wednesday.
Kenneth Feinberg, who was named the White House's pay czar in June, will demand that each of the seven largest bailout recipients lower the total compensation for their top 25 highest paid employees by 50%, on average, the official told CNN.
For the past two months, Feinberg has been reviewing pay plans at Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC and Chrysler Financial in an effort to put these firms in a position to pay back bailout money as soon as possible. CNN
Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack says he's trying to fix compensation but he doesn't appear to get it. "It's a war for talent." B.S. He says banks are an easy target:
The Obama administration on Wednesday appointed a compensation overseer with broad discretion to set the pay for 175 top executives at seven of the nation’s largest companies, which have received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal assistance to survive.
The mandate given to the new compensation official, Kenneth R. Feinberg, a well-known Washington lawyer, reflects the federal government’s increasingly intrusive role in the corporate affairs of deeply troubled companies. From his nondescript office in Room 1310 of the Treasury building, Mr. Feinberg will set the salaries and bonuses of some of the top financiers and industrialists in America, including Kenneth D. Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America; Vikram S. Pandit, the head of Citigroup, and Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of General Motors.
The compensation of executives at some companies receiving aid provoked a firestorm of political outrage earlier this year. In revising a previous proposal to set pay limits, the administration has decided to take an approach that will leave the success or failure of the effort to curtail high compensation at the assisted companies in the hands of Mr. Feinberg. (Mr. Feinberg himself will not receive any government compensation.) Read more at NYT
Kenneth R. Feinberg has been key to resolving many of our nation's most challenging and widely known disputes. He is best known for serving as the Special Master of the Federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, in which he reached out to all who qualified to file a claim, evaluated applications, determined appropriate compensation, and disseminated awards. Mr. Feinberg shared his extraordinary experience in his book What Is Life Worth?, published in 2005 by Public Affairs Press. Just a few years later, Mr. Feinberg became Fund Administrator for the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund following the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. Mr. Feinberg also has served as Special Master in Agent Orange, asbestos personal injury, wrongful death claims, Dalkon shield, and DES (pregnancy medication) cases. Mr. Feinberg founded Feinberg Rozen, LLP in 1992. He has been involved in resolving thousands of disputes involving a wide range of interests and clients. In the commercial sector, Mr. Feinberg designed, implemented and administered an ADR settlement Program involving Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, Zurich N.A. Insurance Company and Hurricane Katrina and other Gulf hurricane claimants. He also has served as Distribution Agent for AIG Fair Fund claimants, and has been the Fund Administrator for a variety of claimant funds totaling more than $1 billion. In his capacity as an arbitrator, Mr. Feinberg helped determine the fair market value of the original Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination, and legal fees in Holocaust slave labor litigation. Mr. Feinberg has been appointed to two presidential-level commissions because of his experience and expertise, and has had a distinguished teaching career as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, New York University, and the University of Virginia. In 2004, he was named "Lawyer of the Year" by the National Law Journal (2004), and has been named repeatedly as one of "The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America" by the National Law Journal. Education: B.A., cum laude, University of Massachusetts, 1967 J.D., New York University School of Law, 1970, (Law Review) Clerkships: Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, New York State Court of Appeals 1970-1972 Leadership: Chairman of the Board of the RAND Institute of Civil Justice Vice-Chairman, Board of Human Rights First Board, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
Read the Treasury press release outlining the details here.
