Walk with me if you will down memory lane.  Back to a time before everyone had achieved selective amnesia that allowed them to blame everyone's problems on a small group of people working to fix them.

The date is October 16, 2008.  From the office of the Attorney General of New York in a joint statement with AIG.

The meeting in the Attorney General's New York City Offices occurred one day after Attorney General Cuomo informed AIG that it must recover improper bonuses and other payments and perks from its former executives or Cuomo would do so pursuant to New York law....

....Attorney General Cuomo added, "These actions are not intended to jeopardize the hard-earned compensation of the vast majority of AIG's employees, including retention and severance arrangements, who are essential to rebuilding AIG and the economy of New York."

Now fast forward to today.  Considering these retention agreements were in place when this statement was made, what can we infer about the honesty of Mr. Cuomo's recent posturing? Can he really credibly say he didn't know and didn't approve of these agreements?  Shouldn't the AIG guys be angry at his new song?  Are they wrong to be so?

And where are the "journalists" who are supposed to have memories of events that last longer than the passing hysteria?  Like all politicians today, Cuomo is relying on the fact that "the media" can't remember what happened even last Tuesday and will accept whatever meme is handed to them on a silver platter.  And sadly, TPM did not disappoint.

No time for accuracy or nuance ... there's outrage to harnass and strawmen to burn.  New Media's finest moment, this is not.

UPDATE: Yesterday TPM told us about a letter written by an AIG insider.  They chose to excerpt a single sentence highlighting a specific AIG official.  The actual text of the letter is pretty interesting.  It can easily be construed to fit any number of popular mems rolling about; entitlement, extortion, victimization, etc.  Aside from that, there is one key assertion that pertains to Cuomo's amnesia that I found quite interesting:

1) On October 22nd 2008 (one month after bailout) Andrew Cuomo reaffirmed our right to payments under the retention plan.

2) On October 9th Bill Dooley, the head of financial services at AIG, restated that the treasury and AIG were committed to payments under the ERP.
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6) AIG prepaid 30% of the ERP amount in December with their hearty thanks for a job well done. The treasury knew of and had to approve this.

Now one MAJOR caveat: this is an based on an anonymous letter (that TPM and other media outlets have chosen to accept as genuine).  But if this is indeed genuine, it indicates that not only did Cuomo know about AIG retention awards generally, he addressed the awards for AIGFP employees specifically about 2 weeks after the official joint statement.  Apparently at that point he had absolutely no problem with them.

So did the amount of these awards increase between October 2008 and March 2009?  If not, what's the deal?
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