• White House officials and some members of Congress reacted strongly yesterday to news that insurance giant AIG had intended to pay out $165 million in bonuses and compensation. The company has received at least $170 billion in federal bailout money. Under pressure from the Treasury, AIG scaled back the bonuses by at least 30%. That did little to temper outrage.
• America’s recession will “probably” end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday in a rare television interview. He admitted, however, that recovery hinges on getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.
• President Obama will today announce a broad package of measures from the stimulus plan that will be used to immediately provide billions of dollars in federal lending aid aimed at struggling small business owners.
• Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that President Obama is making critical national security choices that make the American people less safe. In a television interview yesterday, Cheney said Obama is making some choices that “will in fact raise the risk to the American people of another attack.”
• Ron Silver, who won a Tony for his role in “Speed-the-Plow” and an Emmy nomination for his work in “The West Wing” died yesterday. He was 62 and had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years.
