Let the Fratricide Begin (WashPost, Dana Milbank)

"As Michael Moore threatens moderates, Democrats begin tearing each other apart over health care." (WashPost's straight news story here.)

'08 rise in NYC rich club (NY Post)

"The jump was part of a rapidly growing income gap across the country that saw middle- and low-income families get pinched more by the recession."

Mixed Data Reflect Fragility of Economic Recovery (WSJ)

Are We Poised for Another Great Bull Market? (Seeking Alpha, Babak)

Probably not. "At best, we are going through a cyclical bull market — otherwise known as a bear market rally."

Moral decay? Or deregulation? (NYT, Paul Krugman)

A big dose of fluoride squirted on David Brooks's "moral decay."

Cyber Gangs Hit Healthcare Providers (WashPost)

Yet another threat to health care that's even bigger than the Democrats' infighting: Thieves, believed to be based in Eastern Europe, defrauding U.S. nonprofits that serve the disabled, uninsured, and kids. Another health threat from overseas, but this one affecting people from overseas: "The 'keister bomb' is the newest terror threat."

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Americans Plan to Limit Spending on Recovery Concern (Bloomberg)

Wall Street's pissed at you for not wanting to spend more money during the recession.

Pen to paper: Will Madoff make him rich? (Philadelphia Daily News)

K.C. White sketched a portrait of fellow convict Bernie Madoff in the Butner, N.C., federal pen and hopes to peddle it. Its title? "Fuck My Victims." The recently freed White says Madoff autographed it for him and told him, "I made them millions of dollars. I'm doing 150 years. Fuck my victims."

The Specter of Lehman Shadows Trade Partners (WSJ)

"The ghost of Lehman Brothers' derivatives business is haunting hundreds of schools, municipalities and companies, which remain entangled in financial transactions with the failed firm."

Volcker Sees 'Long Slog' for U.S. Economy, Seeks Bank Limits (Bloomberg)

Pushing way harder than the Obama administration for limits on trading in risky capital markets by "too-big-to-fail" banks, which is why the Obama administration has marginalized the old codger.

U.S. Stock-Index Futures Advance; Citigroup, Nucor Shares Gain (Bloomberg)

Cuomo Calls In 5 BofA Directors (WSJ)

NY's AG issues subpoenas, scaring the shit out of board members across the country.

Next Up: Dow 10,000? Does Anyone Care? (Seeking Alpha)

When it happens, you'll see big, bold headlines, but not that big a deal. The S&P 500 passing 1,000 — now that was big.

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Ex-Citigroup mogul Weill (left) and ex-AIG mogul Greenberg (right).

Ex-AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg keeps coming out smelling like a rose. He got forced out of AIG in 2005 amid federal and state accounting investigations, so he wasn't around for the blame when AIG tanked three years later. He had already made hundreds of millions of dollars from selling only part of his AIG shares after his ouster and before AIG went bust.

And now today, after protracted negotiations, Greenberg is settling that old dispute by shelling out only $15 million to make an SEC lawsuit go away.

Several big insurers (aside from previously bailed-out AIG) got the OK last month to snarf up money under the TARP. Hartford has finally announced that it wants to tap the taxpayers for $3.4 billion.

Leave aside the strange notion that an insurance company needs to plead for billions in insurance not from a re-insurer but from the government.

Hartford and five other insurers (including the good-hands people at Allstate) had been granted access to a total of $22 billion in TARP funds.

It's one sweet racket for the insurance industry. When the insurers first got the word, their stocks soared. For more background, see this and this.

Aren't you happy for AIG? The bailed-out insurance conglomerate is planning to shed most of its shares in the world's second-largest reinsurer, raising $988 million.

And aren't you happy for JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley? All three bailout recipients will rake in big fees for not only handling the sale but undoubtedly keeping shares of Transatlantic Holdings for themselves.

Don't get too excited: Taxpayers will likely get no share of the profits and fees churned by this deal. The repaving of Wall Street with your gold continues.

In a long overdue and entirely expected move, Edward Liddy is out as chairman and CEO of AIG — as soon as the ailing insurance giant that has soaked taxpayers for billions in bailout money finds replacements, according to Bloomberg and other outlets.

The move is being portrayed as Liddy's choice, and he supposedly recommends that the jobs be separated. But there's no doubt that he's being semi-propelled out of the boardroom.

The Bush regime had appointed Liddy — former boss of Allstate — last September to run AIG. He did manage to keep the bonuses rolling for AIG execs, but he didn't fare too well during Capitol Hill hearings.

Liddy's statement released today quotes him as saying, "Much work remains to be done at AIG, but much has already been accomplished."

Yes, like getting $182.5 billion in bailout money from the taxpayers, instead of being put into receivership, as California congressman Brad Sherman mused during the March hearing at which Liddy was roasted.

Yes, as Ellen E. Schultz reports, bank execs, bailed out by taxpayers but frustrated in their attempts to keep paying big bonues to one another, are reaping the rewards of having taken out life insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of workers — with the banks as the beneficiaries.

Sounds like a sequel to Double Indemnity (1944), but it's real, and though it's a "little-known tactic" among the public, it's common on Wall Street. In "Banks Use Life Insurance to Fund Bonuses," Schultz says Bank of America has $17.3 billion worth of life insurance on its employees, for instance.

Her fascinating little piece adds:

Banks can argue that such policies are merely designed to finance employee benefits. Yes, but .... well, here's how Schultz puts it:

Sure, it's ludicrous on its face, because risk and bailouts are their business, but they've been squealing for a taxpayer bailout for at least six months, and they got the OK, in essence, a month ago ("Big insurers finally get to game the bailout, see stocks soar," April 8; "Rescue me!: Bright days ahead for life insurers under the big, cozy TARP," April 14).

From the Bloomberg story, we get what has become the boilerplate response on Wall Street to this sweet racket of corporate welfare that never seems to stop:

"Deal with the devil" is too right. Insurers, a major lobbying force on Capitol Hill and at the White House, make money by vigorously refusing to pay off on taxpayers' policies. Now taxpayers are insuring these insurance companies, giving them even more money, with no guarantee of a return.

What's particularly galling, however, is that insurance companies (like the notorious AIG) are in the business of dealing with risk, so it seems inconceivable to bail them out — bailouts of others are their entire business, not ours. Nevertheless, we're helping them pay claims for their bad decisions about other businesses' bad decisions:

If they'd been doing their jobs and protecting their own interests, they may have stopped the Wall Street bankers from souring the market on which the insurers depended for capital.

Bailing out insurance companies because of their risky decisions seems like the perfect storm's perfect oxymoron.

Two new pieces of evidence — Herb Allison and Melissa Bean — that we're going to make some more life-insurance companies pretty giddy with cash gifts.

Allison is reported to be the new federal bagman for TARP handouts. Former head of giant insurer/investment/bank conglom TIAA-CREF and currently the temporary Fannie Mae chief, Allison isn't blessed with the perfect name of his predecessor — Neel Kashkari — but he is perfect for further rounds of rescue money.

As we pointed out last week ("Big insurers finally get to game the bailout, see stocks soar"), the life insurers (other than AIG, which has already gotten a bundle) are poised to start feeding at the bailout trough. And now the insurers will apparently have one of their own poised to fill that trough for them.

While some U.S. stock futures slipped this morning, after Tuesday's slump, The Hartford rose 15 percent in pre-market trade.

Sure enough, the market opened higher (on the news of government aid for life insurers and of a big merger of homebuilders), proof that all the Obama Administration has to do to bring us out of the recession is bail out a big corporate sector every day for next year or two. That should do it.

No accident about the bailout of the life insurers. Investors were giddy before the bell about the Wall Street Journal's report this morning that the Obama Administration plans to at last let life-insurance companies join the banks and automakers at the trough. Like the banks, the insurers are being bailed out for their poor investments — not in bets on your lives but on corporate bonds and securities. Not all the big life-insurers made reckless investments; not all will be bailed out.