From Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Leaders of the White House economic team and the Senate’s top Republican bellowed about bonuses at a bailed-out insurance giant and pledged to prevent such payments in the future.

From one Sunday talk show to the next, they tore into the contracts that American International Group asserted had to be honored, to the tune of about $165 million and payable to executives by Sunday – part of a larger total payout reportedly valued at $450 million. The company has benefited from more than $170 billion in a federal rescue.

AIG has agreed to Obama administration requests to restrain future payments. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pressed the president’s case with AIG’s chairman, Edward Liddy, last week.

“He stepped in and berated them, got them to reduce the bonuses following every legal means he has to do this,” said Austan Goolsbee, staff director of President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

“I don’t know why they would follow a policy that’s really not sensible, is obviously going to ignite the ire of millions of people, and we’ve done exactly what we can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again,” Goolsbee said.

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From Associated Press

By Jeannine Aversa

Ending it hinges on getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.

WASHINGTON: America’s recession “probably” will end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday in a rare television interview.

In carefully hedged remarks in a taped interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Bernanke seemed to express a bit more optimism that this could be done.

Still, Bernanke stressed – as he did to Congress last month – that the prospects for the recession ending this year and a recovery taking root next year hinge on a difficult task: getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.

“We’ve seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely,” Bernanke said.

“But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we’re not going to see recovery.

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From The Malaysian Insider

PETALING JAYA, March 15 – The RM60 billion mini Budget might provide guarantees for local businessmen but it has also brought on a huge problem, crippling double levies for both new and existing foreign workers that keep Malaysian exports competitive.

The government imposed the levies in the mini Budget to encourage Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to employ locals but factory managers and even restaurateurs say Malaysians ask for too much but produce too little, forcing them to rely on foreign workers.

The SMI Association of Malaysia is now appealing to the government to consider the double levy, to be paid by employers, only for new foreign workers and not for existing workers.

The association said the imposition of the double levy on existing foreign workers already in the country will cause the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to be penalised and burdened with unexpected additional costs during difficult times.

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