"Everybody wants to find a scapegoat," Zucker continued. "But to suggest that CNBC is responsible is absurd."
Stewart took aim at the business news network after CNBC personality Rick Santelli cancelled an appearance on The Daily Show. A week's worth of critical segments last week culminated in a grilling of "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on the show last Thursday.
"Last year, Jim Cramer was out in front during two days in particular, when he went after Ben Bernanke," Zucker explained in defense of the anchor. "You can
Congress should rescind bailouts and let companies go into bankruptcy, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said yesterday.
"Replace the bailout with bankruptcy, for all of them," Gingrich told a class at Tulane University, where he was visiting Democratic strategist James Carville's class.
Gingrich pegged the bailouts for corporations as the "Bush-Obama strategy," and called Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson the worst in history.
"You can't have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down," Gingrich said, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "You want to teach people around the planet, don't make stupid investments."
Welcome to The Hill's liveblog of the hearing on Capitol Hill featuring AIG executive Edward Liddy. The House Financial Services Committee is expected to rake Liddy over the coals for his company having awarded millions in bonuses while on taxpayer support.
Lawmakers in Congress's upper chamber seemed to indicate Tuesday that they're not to blame them for the bonuses paid out to AIG executives, responding to inquiries from The Hill.
Responding to The Hill's Big Question, many -- though not all -- lawmakers placed blame elsewhere for the alleged misuse of taxpayer funds to support the companies.
The Big Question was:
Was Congress naive to think that the bailouts it approved would not be used in part for executives
AIG executives shouldn't kill themselves, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested, but another Republican lawmaker has a different suggestion: let the military handle them.
"Those who received the fat-cat bonuses are mainly responsible for the company
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) continued his streak of weekly conference calls with Kentucky repporters in which the endangered incumbent proves himself unafraid to speak his mind, this week going after CBS news.
Bunning saved some words for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's interview with "60 Minutes" on Sunday.
"If I see one more puff piece on Ben Bernanke -- ugggh," the Kentucky senator groaned with disgust. "Well what do you expect out of 60 minutes and CBS news? When somebody's in trouble, they prop 'em up."
Bunning wryly suggested that his political fortunes must also be doing well, considering he hasn't been interviewed by the CBS newsmagazine lately.
"By the way, they haven't come to see me lately -- I guess they don't think I need propping up," he added.
Bunning said that the Secretary of the Treasury -- both Tim Geithner and his predecessor, Henry Paulson -- should be held accountable for the poor management of aid to AIG, resulting in the controversial bonuses at the company.
The Kentucky Republican, who faces a tough reelection challenge in 2010, also said that he will not be joining the latest congressional fad by starting a Twitter account.
"Explain exactly what you mean by twitter," Bunning said when asked by a reporter whether he'd be setting up an account.
AIG executives shouldn't kill themselves, but they should take more responsibility for their company's failures than they have to date, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) explained Tuesday.
Grassley explained his remarks Monday in which he suggested that AIG executives should either resign or commit suicide.
"Of course I don't want anybody to go commit suicide, but I do want some contrition -- I want showing of remorse," Grassley said Tuesday during an appearance on Bloomberg News. "I have not heard a single apology from a single Wall Street CEO...for how they've run their company or financial institution."
"And in the case of the Japanese, they do one of two things: they either go commit suicide or they take a deep bow and say apologies and then sometimes resign," Grassley added. "But they take full responsibility, and we're not hearing that. And obviously I don't want anyone to kill themselves, because I don't believe in that sort of thing. But you ought to say, 'I'm sorry.'"
Grassley's remarks were perhaps the most outrageous of those expressed by members of Congress and the Obama administration on Monday after all parties in Washington piled on AIG for handing out millions in bonuses to employees and executives while receiving some of the largest financial assistance from the federal government.
The bailouts of the financial industry have not achieved their desired results, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) asserted Friday.
Taking issue with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's characterization of economic progress under the billions spent to assist banks and other companies, Cornyn said that things may even be getting worse.
"I'm not seeing those results," Cornyn said. "I'm seeing get worse, perhaps."
Some banks that have received assistance from the government last week announced they would not need the next installment of capital injections from the bailout package.
The Texas Republican did join the pile-on for AIG, though, saying executives at insurance giant AIG could learn a lesson from those in charge of General Motors and Chrysler
Cornyn said that the government should ask AIG to restructure and make the same types of sweeping the concessions Detroit's troubled automakers did in exchange for assistance from the federal government.
"We've asked the car dealers to restructure their organization -- including workers restructuring union contracts in order to save the auto industry," Cornyn said during an appearance on CNBC this morning. "We ought to be asking leadership at AIG to be making the same kinds of concessions to save AIG and the taxpayers' dollars."
Cornyn is one of several leading members of Congress to castigate AIG for having awarded bonuses to its executives while receiving major financial assistance from the government. While many lawmakers have had harsh words for the company, many have shied away from saying the government could force the executives to do anything about the bonuses.
The U.S. government is rewarding incompetence by allowing its bailout money for AIG to go for executives' bonuses, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Monday.
Piling on the insurance giant's disclosed bonuses over the weekend, the top Democrat in charge of overseeing the bailouts in the House said AIG executives should choose between their bonuses or their jobs.
"These people may have a right to their bonuses, but they don't have a right to their jobs forever. The federal government is the 80 percent owner," Frank said during a Monday morning appearance on the "Today" show.
"It does appear to me we're rewarding incompetence," he said. "Forget about the legal matter here for a second: these bonuses are going to people who screwed this thing up enormously."
Frank joins the ranks of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have blasted the company for its corporate practices while having been one of the largest recipients of federal assistance in the past eight months.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the bonuses "unconscionable," while Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he was "angered" by AIG.
"Maybe some of these people should choose between keeping their bonus and keeping their job," Frank added.
The Financial Services chairman also called on Congress to revisit the 1932 law giving the Federal Reserve unilateral discretion to make loans without conditions to any recipient.
Greed, fearlessness, and bad government spurred the stock bubble that led to the most recent economic dire straits facing the U.S., National Economic Council Chairman Lawrence Summers asserted Friday.
"An abundance of greed and an absence of fear on Wall Street led some to make purchases -- not based on the real value of assets, but on the faith that there would be another who would pay more for those assets," Summers said Friday morning during an address at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. "At the same time, the government turned a blind eye to these practices and their potential consequences for the economy as a whole."
"This is how a bubble is born," the former Treasury secretary added. "And in these moments, greed begets greed."
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