News Roundup: Oops Edition

You know T. Boone SwiftboatPickens and his campaign to get the US off foreign oil and on to wind and natural gas? Well apparently Pickens only thinks his idea is good if it can put more coins in his coffee cans:

Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is delaying his massive Texas wind project, citing a drop in natural gas prices and the tightening credit market.

[...]

But natural gas prices have fallen from over $12 per million British thermal units last summer to current levels of around $6.

The fall in natural gas prices makes switching to wind power a less certain bet, as utilities would be reluctant to replace natural gas with wind now that natural gas prices are so low.

Pickens said Tuesday that natural gas prices need to be about $9/Btu in order for wind power to be competitive.

And by "competitive", I'm assuming he means profitable for T. Boone Pickens.

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Hank Paulson is now saying basically that the plans for how to spend the $700 billion bailout package are in the round file:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced Wednesday that the administration had decided to scrap what had originally been the centerpiece of the program _ a proposal to buy troubled assets to get them off the books of banks as a way of promoting increased lending.

[...]

The administration has already spoken for all but $60 billion of the initial $350 billion supplied by Congress, including the $250 billion for direct stock purchases from banks and $40 billion for a new loan supplied on Monday to help stabilize troubled insurance giant American International Group.

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Speaking of AIG:

A key Democratic lawmaker called Tuesday for the resignation of American International Group's CEO after the troubled insurer held a financial planners conference last week at a posh Arizona resort.

The company responded that the event cost AIG very little and was aimed at boosting income.

AIG had come under sharp criticism for sending executives on a lavish English partridge hunt and a weeklong retreat at a California resort after accepting an $85 billion bailout -- since grown to $150 billion -- from the federal government in September.

[...]

Phoenix TV station KNXV, a CNN affiliate, reported that AIG tried to keep its connection to the 2008 Asset Management Conference a secret by ensuring that no AIG logos were on the property.

Undercover footage shot by KNXV shows top AIG executives, including Larry Roth, president and CEO of AIG Advisor Group, sitting poolside and drinking coffee while conference-goers attended meetings. Another executive -- Art Tambaro, head of AIG subsidiary Royal Alliance -- stayed in one of the resort's two-story villas.

The footage also shows a few executives being shuttled in a luxury Lincoln Town Car one night and enjoying dinner and drinks at a McCormick & Schmick's seafood restaurant, where they spent more than $400, KNXV reported.

AIG's defense on all these luxury junkets seems to be that they are necessary to boost sales. Well maybe in a different economy - one in which US taxpayers are not loaning your company billions to stay afloat - these types of motivational/reward spa holidays might seem worthwhile. But come on AIG, if your people need motivation to sell your product, how about getting in bed with the rest of us and relying on the old If You Want to Keep Your Job motivational tool? And as far as rewards go, why not hop on board the Your Paycheck is the Only Reward You Get train with everybody else in America? I'm sorry but we, the American taxpayers, are now 80% owners of your company. As such, I'm kinda the boss of you AIG. And I'd like to see you in my office. Now.