A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn’t show up at all.
“It’s a mob effect,” one senior executive said. “It’s putting people’s lives in danger.”
Politicians and the public spent yesterday demanding that AIG rescind payouts that they said rewarded recklessness and greed at a company being bailed out with $170 billion in taxpayer funds. But company officials contend that the uproar is scaring away the very employees who understand AIG Financial Products’ complex trades and who are trying to dismantle the division before it further endangers the world’s economy. “It’s going to blow up,” said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. “I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly.”
President Obama yesterday vowed to “pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses.” But that pledge might have come too late. About $165 million in retention payments started to go out Friday to employees at Financial Products, after numerous discussions with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. Attorneys working for the Fed had been examining the matter for months and determined that the retention payments couldn’t be touched because AIG would face costly lawsuits and be subject to penalties from states and foreign governments. Administration officials said over the weekend that they agreed with that assessment.
My heart is bleeding. The bogus argument that they need the bonuses to retain these morons is total BS. Let them leave, and try to find work elsewhere… good luck.
These people deserve what they get. By giving up their perceived bonus they would be relieving themselves of all burdens f blame. But unfortunately they are all cowards and will take their “rewards” wether they deserve them or not………They will eventually get what they deserve……IN HELL
Gary, good point. All AIG had to do was go to their people and ask that they re-do their contracts in light of the current situation.
If we do use guillotines, we’ll start with the AIG execs so that when we get to the Goldman Sucks people the blade will be duller!
If AIG had been allowed to go bankrupt, then none of the contracts or obligations would be binding. The government could have then stepped in to guarantee the insurance policies.
“I couldn’t care less about their employees, lot’s of people going jobless, why should they be different.”
Jobless, but still wealthy enough to survive. How about the people that don’t have that luxury and are being denied by the banks that got the bail out a simple loan. Yes this is going to cause anger. Yes, there is going to be that one person that “loses” it.
S&P must have them rated at AAA again after seeing the bonuses.
Waah! Nuf said.
YEA!
Lets kill the fuckers. Sodomize ’em. What laughs? What giggles. Take their money and make ’em be our bitches.
Feel better? No? Let’s rape their wives. Sodomize their children. Oh, you like that better now?
So, did you get anything but “feelings” from this exercise in hate?
The bonuses are GUARANTEED BY THE STIMULUS! Dodd took his bribe and did his job by putting it in a package no one had time to read.
The Dems are shameless. But most of you will ignore it and defend them.
Nothing is guaranteed. Get used to it.
Simple solution.
Tell the AIG employees, “If you want to work here, you don’t get a bonus. Take a bonus and you don’t work here”.
Then you hand them all the help wanted section of their local paper.
FYI,
The bonus clawback provision was removed by Susan Collins, one of the Republican Senators the Democrats got to vote for the bill. What the behind the scenes politicking was I don’t know, but it wasn’t Senator Dodd’s doing. He was in favor of no bonuses.
If we’d just let AIG go bankrupt, the Dow would be at 1,000, the government would be in a shambles, and we could finally have another revolution to wash away all the crap that is built up in Washington over the past 220 years.
My analogy is that if a group of 20 people built bombs that could only be dismantled successfully by completing 100 steps in the exact right order, do you want to kill all 20 of those people before you start to dismantle the bomb? AIG FP built bombs to destroy the financial system. Do you want the people who built the bombs to help dismantle them or do you figure that maybe an American demigogue and World War III might not be so bad? A few nukes should at least solve the Global Warming problem.
#43–red==when dealing with bombs, you get yourself as far away as possible. You don’t buy those bombs and move them into your house.
Analogies are not helpful in understanding any complex issue as they tend to stand on their own. Problem here is “no one” really knows what the cause and effect relationships are in this international connected layered mess.
Capitalism and the free market is “BASED ON” letting failures fail and dealing with the reality of the marketplace. That touchstone should be more firmly kept in mind as we work through these issues. – – – or maybe not.
Why is it that a worker, working for GM has to renegotiate his union wages, but an executive working for AIG does not have to renegotiate his bonuses?
Sounds like a double standard to me.
#44, Bobbo,
You don’t buy those bombs and move them into your house.
While I agree in principle, I think the past eight years might prove us both wrong.
Capitalism and the free market is “BASED ON” letting failures fail and dealing with the reality of the marketplace.
Which is why there hasn’t been a “Free Market” in many hundreds of years. All large companies will get government support, whether it was a Charter or monopoly from the King, or having preferential treatment by the Pentagon, some businesses were always allowed to succeed over others.
The guys being given bonuses could get jobs pretty easily from other firms. They should have just let AIG fail with all the banks. If people are going to try to run the company themselves in a haphazard fashion where the good workers will want to leave, then what’s the point?
Whats with this “super” tax being put on these bonuses? I didn’t know the gov’t could single out a taxpayer and make them pay a “100%” tax on a paycheck. If they can actually do that, then we are obviously misdirected in our anger. Everyone here is ok with the gov’t having the power/authority to do this??
Also, I’m pissed these guys are getting our money. But I’m more pissed about the billions and trillions being burned by obama.
Also, I thought at first that I would do the right thing and return the money. But after second thought, why the hell would you give money back to the gov’t? They obviously are the worlds worst budgeter. And not once have I agreed with anywhere that obama has spent money. Nope. Not a chance in hell I would give it back. I could help more people than obama can.
#42 Dodd admitted on CNN that HE modified the amendment to allow for 2008 bonuses at the request of the Obama administration.
Yesterday, he was on CNN claiming he had no idea who had changed the amendment.
This is called a lie. Dodd can not be trusted.
See it all
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/18/dodd-you-know-now-i-remember-adding-that-bonus-language/
This whole thing seems like a gross over-reaction.