http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101926747&ft=1&f=1014
"AIG will pay bonuses totaling $165 million. The money comes from taxpayers, funneled through the multibillion dollar bailout plan, but the president's top advisers and congressional leaders say they can't do anything about it."
That's bankrupt, busted-flat-in-Baton-Rouge-waiting-for-a-train AIG. Yeah, them.
$165 million in bonuses. BONUSES.
"AIG executives made trillions of dollars of bets that subprime mortgages could never go bad. When they tanked, the government felt compelled to prop up the company with $170 billion in taxpayers' funds. Even with the money, AIG recently posted a loss of nearly $62 billion — the largest corporate loss in history."
Never go bad. NEVER go bad. Read that sentence again. Apparently, elevators at AIG only go up. Reminds me of the elevator from the Douglas Adams book-when you tell it you want to go up, it tries to convince you that down is better.
"And, Liddy added, AIG needs to retain the best and brightest talent if it's ever going to pay back the American taxpayers."
I can think of many adjectives to describe the current crop of employees at AIG.
Suffice it to say "best" and "brightest" are not two of those adjectives.
Congress can ban the bonuses easily if they want with a provision preventing the would-be bonus receivers from filing frivolous lawsuits. However, Congress is usually reluctant to reign in frivolous lawsuits.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read, it's not as simple as we would like-these people have contracts that Congress cannot unilaterally abrogate. And, truth be told, I understand that, if we want our money back, we do need some smart folks there.
ReplyDeleteBut it still makes one's blood boil.
They aren't very smart though, are they? That kind of argument is often used to overpay already-rich people (often directly with taxpayer money), but it really does not fly when you look at very highly paid corporate and government people who happen to be corrupt.
ReplyDeleteBut it looks like that blocking the lawsuits won't be necessary. They can accomplish the same thing with the "90% tax on AIG bonuses" idea.
That's true.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right-the more people my age assume positions of authority, the more I realize that they aren't that much smarter than me.