memeorandum: Iraq Considers Giving Foreign Oil Investors Better Terms (New York Times)

11:50 AM ET, March 19, 2009

Top Items:

How the Fed Failed to Tell Obama About The Bonuses — Federal Reserve officials knew for months about bonuses at American International Group but failed to tell the Obama administration, according to government and company officials, exposing problems in a relationship that is vital to addressing the financial crisis.

Discussion: Salon, New York Times, Talking Points Memo, The Politico, The Plum Line, PoliBlog, The Raw Story, The Corner, Time, Right Wing Nut House, theheretik.us, Flopping Aces, TIME.com, George's Bottom Line, The New Republic, Oliver Willis and Associated Press

Stephen Ohlemacher / Associated Press:

House to vote on 90 percent tax for AIG bonuses — Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition — WASHINGTON - The House is scheduled to vote today on a bill that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies …

Discussion: Michelle Malkin, The Politico, MSNBC, New York Post, GINA COBB, The Mahablog, JONATHAN TURLEY, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press

Manu Raju / The Politico:

GOP wary of plan to tax AIG bonuses — A plan to recoup millions of dollars of American International Group bonuses by taxing them into oblivion has put top Republicans on opposite sides of a riddle: When is a tax hike not a tax hike? — House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) …

Discussion: The Swamp, MSNBC and Democratic Strategist

DealBook:

Dissecting the A.I.G. Bonus Contract — Washington is filled with outrage over the $165 million in bonuses given out by the American International Group. Yet, as I said in my post on Tuesday, “Seven Sad Truths About A.I.G.,” the real concern over the insurance giant should be about the $170 billion …

Discussion: FiveThirtyEight, Slate, Washington Monthly and Obsidian Wings

Wall Street Journal:

Some Will Pay Back AIG Bonuses — Some top employees of American International Group Inc.'s disgraced Financial Products group have agreed to return hefty retention bonuses under mounting public outrage over $165 million in payouts to a unit that brought the insurer to its knees.

Discussion: Washington Post, The Campaign Spot, Clusterstock and The Washington Independent

Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:
But Who Controls The Teleprompter?

Discussion: Patterico's Pontifications and TigerHawk

Jackie Calmes / New York Times:
A.I.G. Uproar Is a Defining Moment for Geithner

Christopher Keating / Hartford Courant:
Dodd Admits Role In AIG Bonus Controversy

Discussion: Washington Post, The Politico, Wall Street Journal, Runnin' Scared and The Strata-Sphere

Ryan J. Donmoyer / Bloomberg:
Dodd Blames Obama Administration for Bonus Amendment

Discussion: A Blog For All and JONATHAN TURLEY

Josh Kraushaar / The Politico:
GOP hopes bonuses are election issue

Discussion: TIME.com

Massimo Calabresi / Time:
Treasury Learned of AIG Bonuses Earlier Than Claimed

Discussion: Firedoglake, The Daily Dish, pw, Emptywheel, The Plum Line, Betsy's Page, Open Left, Donklephant, TIME.com, The Curious Capitalist, Commentary, CBS News and Reuters

Fox News:

Duke Coach to Obama: Worry About the Economy, Not NCAA Picks — Reacting to news Obama picked North Carolina to win the NCAA Championship, Mike Krzyzewski says, “the economy is something that [the president] should focus on, probably more than the brackets.”

Discussion: TIME.com, The New Republic and FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

Cherry-Picker-in-Chief — FiveThirtyEight Exclusive: Obama NCAA Bracket Suggests Bias Toward Schools from Swing States — Is President Obama playing favorites with his NCAA bracket? Neither Columbia University nor the University of Chicago have an entry in the Big Dance (the Maroons, alas, aren't even in D-1).

Discussion: The Opinionator, Ben Smith's Blog and Politicker NY

Peter Hamby / CNN:

Coach K disses Obama's basketball picks — WASHINGTON (CNN) - Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski isn't thrilled his team got snubbed by the leader of the free world. — “Somebody said that we're not in President Obama's Final Four, and as much as I respect what he's doing, really …

Discussion: The Cloakroom and Weekly Standard

Washington Times:

EXCLUSIVE: Obama's $500,000 book bonanza — Deal reached 5 days before he took office — As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children's book project, a disclosure report shows.

Discussion: Townhall.com, JustOneMinute, Political Punch and Pajamas Media

Hillel Italie / Associated Press:
George W. Bush to write memoir about ‘decisions’

Discussion: The Fix, Jules Crittenden, Political Punch, Connecting.the.Dots and Newsweek Blogs

Motoko Rich / The Caucus:
‘The Decider’ to Become ‘The Author’

Discussion: TIME.com and The Politico

Eddie / Sky News:

Julia Alasheyeva, Moscow — A picture has emerged apparently showing Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in his former days as a KGB officer. — The 20-year old photo depicts two world leaders - US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - in Moscow.

Discussion: FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog, Ben Smith's Blog, AmSpecBlog and Jules Crittenden

Washington Post:

Our Must-Win War — The ‘Minimalist’ Path Is Wrong for Afghanistan — Later this month, the Obama administration will unveil a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan. This comes as most important indicators in Afghanistan are pointing in the wrong direction.

Discussion: The Hill's Blog Briefing Room, The Washington Independent, Commentary, Outside The Beltway, Taylor Marsh, MSNBC and democracyarsenal.org

Charles Babington / Associated Press:

Schwarzenegger to help Obama answer GOP critics — Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition — LOS ANGELES - President Barack Obama is playing a bit of divide and conquer this week, pitting his Republican critics in Washington against GOP governors and mayors eager …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Politico, USA Today, Associated Press and But As For Me

Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:
Coming to a stage near you, the well-oiled Obama Road Show

Discussion: Hot Air and The Moderate Voice

Dschabner / Political Punch:

President Obama Compares Big Banks, AIG, to Suicide Bombers — At his town hall meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., Wednesday evening, President Obama compared embattled insurer AIG and other large failing banks to a suicide bomber. — “A lot of people say, ‘Well, why not just let the banks fail?’” the president said.

Discussion: Don Surber

Robin Abcarian / Top of the Ticket:
Obama Town Hall: A lesson on banking and how AIG is like a suicide bomber

Discussion: The Campaign Spot

Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg:

Citigroup Said to Commit $10 Million for New Executive Suite — Citigroup Inc. plans to spend about $10 million on new offices for Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit and his lieutenants, after the U.S. government injected $45 billion of cash into the bank.

Discussion: Swampland

David Adam / Guardian:

Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working' — Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said. — James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying …

Discussion: But As For Me, Maggie's Farm, LewRockwell.com Blog and Vox Popoli

Laura Rozen / The Cable:

Top brass disturbed by GOP stalling of Iraq ambassador — There's one as yet unremarked constituency increasingly disturbed by some Republican senators' efforts to block the confirmation of former North Korea envoy Christopher Hill to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq: the U.S. military.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, The Huffington Post, Matthew Yglesias, The New Republic, ATTACKERMAN and The Washington Independent

Evan Perez / Wall Street Journal:

Detainees May Be Released in U.S. — WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder said some detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may end up being released in the U.S. as the Obama administration works with foreign allies to resettle some of the prisoners.

Discussion: Hot Air, TPMMuckraker, Right Wing News, A Blog For All, The Foundry, The Corner, The Campaign Spot and Stop The ACLU

Reihan Salam / The Atlantic Politics Channel:

Rethinking The JournoList List — A friend emailed to ask me for my thoughts on the “JournoList,” a question prompted by Michael Calderone's short but suggestive report in yesterday's Politico. Calderone's piece is for the most part a lament about the secrecy maintained by the members of the list …

Louise Story / New York Times:

Cuomo Wins Ruling to Name Merrill Bonus Recipients — Andrew M. Cuomo is starting to unearth some of the most closely guarded secrets on Wall Street: the identities of Merrill Lynch employees who collected large bonuses even as the brokerage firm lost billions.

Discussion: TPMMuckraker and The BLT

Susan Evans / The Tribune Democrat, Johnstown, PA:

Murtha defends statement — The region's outspoken congressman is in the national lens again - this time CBS News television cameras - in a report Wednesday that calls him “the king of earmarks who wastes a lot of taxpayer money” and implies that the FBI is investigating.

Discussion: RedState and Pajamas Media

Thomas Vinciguerra / New York Times:

Getting Their Kirk On — THERE is nothing particularly unusual about the living room of the two-story town house that Scott Veazie shares with his wife in Washougal, Wash., except for one piece of furniture in a corner: a full-size replica of the captain's chair from the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise …

Washington Post:

What to Do About AIG? — Chief executive of AIG from 1967 to 2005 — CEO Edward Liddy believes that dismantling AIG, once the world's largest and most successful insurance company, is the only way to repay the taxpayer money it has received. But AIG's history demonstrates that its businesses …

Discussion: Commentary

James K. Galbraith / Associated Press:

No Return to Normal — Why the economic crisis, and its solution, — are bigger than you think. — B arack Obama's presidency began in hope and goodwill, but its test will be its success or failure on the economics. Did the president and his team correctly diagnose the problem?

Discussion: Left in the West and Washington Monthly