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.
Scenario:
1. Guy in Detroit gets laid off, pension is gone, 55 years old
2. His wife has cancer and is terminal
3. Gun owner
4. Car ride to New York
5. Dead AIG exec
If I was in Vegas I’d bet money on this scenario.
Never mind the billions of dollars AIG gave away to foreign banks, the guy in Detroit is going mano-a-mano.
Maybe something “very bad” should happen to these pricks. Laws are far-sighted deterrents, these people obviously have no foresight and care very little about how things will turn out further down the line.
WTF!Obama is a lawyer.You punish people in this country by taking them to court.He knows that and so do the creeps at AIG.We are all so screwed.We are solving our debt problem and our balance of payments problem by destroying our currency.Look for 20 percent inflation by 2011.
#20
RSweeney I’m sure you felt the same way about the autoworkers contracts right
RSweeney said,
snip
They need to break their union contracts to survive, the cost structure is simply unsupportable.
#10 I think that government can’t arbitrarily suspend private contracts.
yup they should put a precondition on any bail out moneys that those kind of private contracts must be renegotiated before we give them the cash.
aww bankruptcy not realy an option here, to bad the lack of regulations let AIG get so big as it is to big to fail without bring the house down now they can just go on extorting us.
Personally I think the UAW and GM have been locked in a death spiral for decades we could all see it coming now they are about to hit bottom.
LISTEN YOU GUYS
Stop arguing. We’re all in this together. Now look, we all want this problem to be resolved but turning against each other won’t make it happen any sooner. Did any of you stop to think that these execs have families? Children? People they care about?
The children will be the easiest, because they can’t run very fast. If there are women involved, they may lose a shoe in the melee which buys us enough time to overtake them, especially if they are caring after the little ones. Security guards should be pretty easy to bribe, which leaves any kind of home invasion protection. Is anybody good with circuit breakers? Panic rooms may pose trouble though I’m not sure how commonly these are installed. A blow torch could provide just enough of a hole in the side paneling to insert a tube whereby caustic inhalants can be blown into the space, forcing the well-offs to either surrender or suffocate. Ensuring safety in exchange for cooperation will be key in gaining a false sense of trust. They make walk right out.
Then it’s just a matter of constructing some sort of rudimentary head-chopping device or “guillotine” and we’re off to the races!
# 12 Jim said, “When that company can’t stand on it’s own 2 feet, and comes begging for a handout, and it comes from the taxpayer, we get a say in the matter.”
Actually, you have NO say. The legislators & Pres do. They already said it was okay when they passed the legislation…
#24… Congress DID put a pre-condition in the TARP bill.
They said that bonuses for 2008 (paid in 2009) were fine.
Hard working dedicated executives need retention bonuses to keep them in the company, but paying retention bonuses to executives who have already resigned or have been fired and have left the company, is probably a good reason to get angry.
http://tinyurl.com/dkntc9
I don’t like the idea of the government taxing these AIG people to recoup the bonuses. Once the government sets a precedence, they’ll keep doing it, eventually to us.
As for the AIG people getting the bonuses, the government needs to examine each person’s contract as to what it says and act on a case by case basis. Some of these guys may be entitled to the bonuses (legally speaking).
This is just more frickin distraction from the real problem. While we are bitching about a 100 million dollars the big guys are absconding with 100′s of BILLIONS!
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?
Hang ‘em all by the balls.
#4 Be happy that at least people are seeing something bad here. Don’t expect too much about sheeple.
#7 Best of all is, they refer to those “bright minds” who drove ‘em to bankrupcy as “best of the best” in their field. Almost makes me sad to see what happens shall they hire any lesser.
#17 Right you are. This seems the generation of the highschool/college exam copy club.
#26 So true as well. The shite just hit the fan when people started to notice the play. I wonder who blew the whistle to the press.
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.