Time Is Energy

Mind blowing greed

From the annals of you can't make this shit up:

"Insurance giant AIG to pay $165 million in bonuses"

Yes, this the same AIG that has received $170-180 BILLION in taxpayer funded bailouts over the past 7 months.

OUTRAGEOUS!^Nth

From the article

Geithner termed the current bonus structure unacceptable in view of the billions of dollars of taxpayer support the company is receiving, this official said.
In a letter to Geithner dated Saturday, Liddy informed Treasury that outside lawyers had informed the company that AIG had contractual obligations to make the bonus payments and could face lawsuits if it did not do so.
Liddy said in his letter that "quite frankly, AIG's hands are tied" although he said that in light of the company's current situation he found it "distasteful and difficult" to recommend going forward with the payments.

*allow me to count backwards from 10 to 1 to avoid going ballistic*
*exhaling*

Okay...first as a matter of English, how can a bonus be a contractual obligation? A bonus is quite literally "something extra", "in addition to what is expected or strictly due". Second even if you accept the dubious notion that a bonus can be a contractual obligation, nobody should expect a bonus for bankrupting the firm! (and this is what the good folks at AIG have done). I'd really like to see the clause that says you get this bonus no matter how completely you fail in your job--such that Mr Liddy's "hands are tied".

Speaking of tying hands...where is the investigation into the massive fraud that AIG perpetrated?

I think the most responsible reaction to AIG getting all legalistic (I mean so what if AIG "could face lawsuits" from the clowns that blew the place up?--oh noes! not lawsuits! AIG is only the biggest insurance company on the planet--or pretended it was!) is to send in a medium sized army of federal investigators to comb through AIG's books and emails looking for anything worthy of prosecuting.

Mr. Attorney General, are you listening?

They sold hundreds of billions of dollars of financial insurance without any ability (or intention) of paying if off...that is a textbook case of fraud. And it was clearly a conspiracy...possibly involving racketeering! This is like an institutionalized Bernie Madoff x 10!

I think the Treasury should furthermore freeze the assets of any individual at AIG suspected of involvement in the fraud or the conspiracy to commit the fraud.

And these scoundrels are demanding bonuses!
No. NO. NOOOOOOOOO!

posted by Daniel @ 10:02 AM