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March 18, 2009 at 5:46 am #590122
mom2sorenMemberOK, here’s something to really be angry about. This is so frickin’ infuriating. I voted for Obama & the dems, but why oh why didn’t they DO something to prevent this from happening? Anyone read Huff Post lately? Supposedly there was language in the Senate version of the stimulus package bill to prevent these type of bonuses, yet it was stripped in the house version of the bill. Obama could have influenced the final bill — and maybe Geithner is incompetent. Why was the protective language removed?
These are tax payers’ dollars!!
My parents are struggling on social security after losing all their life savings, unemployment is sky high, jobs are difficult to find, and homes are foreclosing left and right. And the guys at AIG get bonuses worth millions of dollars per person.
I feel sick.
March 18, 2009 at 6:37 am #660920
AnonymousInactiveOFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
We seriously need to consider seceding with Texas. Chuck Norris will be president, and his tears cure cancer.
March 18, 2009 at 7:56 am #660921
HMC RichParticipantChris Dodd and crew are crooks. Look who took donations from AIG too!
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/dodd-cracks-aig—time/
Vote these idiots out.
March 18, 2009 at 8:48 am #660922
sunshineParticipanthow about the AIG execs say “hey, legally, i could takre it, but: no thanks”?
March 18, 2009 at 11:43 am #660923
JanSParticipantA.I.G. = Adventures In Greed…..
AIG is bigger than the whole Homeland Security Dept…..amazing that no one knows exactly who oversees these people. Technically, we, the people , own 80% of this entity…so lets exercise some of our control…whaddya say?
March 18, 2009 at 1:47 pm #660924
rockhillsMemberAIG is only the latest example of ridiculous waste. The time to police what the institutions did with their–ooops, I mean OUR–money was before we handed it to them. Congress didn’t seem interested in doing that in spite of the avalanche of calls/letters/e-mails they received begging for a little sanity. We’ll have a hard time getting that money back now.
March 18, 2009 at 2:25 pm #660925
KenParticipantLinks and details that indicate the bonuses are maybe not the worst of it, but are easy to focus on for “journalist” and those who like their financial scandals pre-digested.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/18/709953/-Spitzer:The-bonuses-are-a-smokescreen
Hang Chris Dodd if you like. He is a fool for other reasons, but don’t try to pretend this is somehow a Democratic scandal.
March 18, 2009 at 2:49 pm #660926
c@lbobMemberThe circumstances surrounding the FBI focusing on Spitzer’s phone conversations with his prostitute are beginning to look even more suspicious.
March 18, 2009 at 4:17 pm #660927
KenParticipantAlso note: The fox business report linked above (and on every wingnut site on the planet) is actually an easily debunked lie.
Dodd’s amendment as introduced directed the Treasury secretary to require each Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) recipient to “meet appropriate standards for executive compensation and corporate governance”: “a prohibition on such TARP recipient paying or accruing any bonus, retention award, or incentive compensation during the period that the obligation is outstanding to at least the 25 most highly-compensated employees, or such higher number as the Secretary may determine is in the public interest with respect to any TARP recipient.”
The pdf of the congressional record including the original text of the bill.
March 18, 2009 at 6:21 pm #660928
JoBParticipantThe payments that were made to AIG started in September of 2008.. when Obama was no more than a gleam in the democratic eye…
And by the way, they were made without congressional approval.
For those who are challenged by time lines.. Obama’s presidency has not yet reached it’s 100th day..
George W Bush.. a republican.. was in control and the fellow handing out the totally unrestricted AIG money was not a democrat.
Unlucky for George that the financial bubble burst before he could leave the room… even if it hadn’t, it was his administrations duty to regulate AIG… and it is more than obvious that they failed miserably.
with more than just AIG…
But sticking to AIG… apparantly it was politically expedient to move their oversight into the savings and loan division where the regulators had neither the time nor the expertise to regulate them.
That said… has it just now become news to many of you that vested interests have the ear of our elected officials because they gave them all tons of money to finance their elections?
Yup, it’s time to demand better. Demanding more accountability would have been a good thing during the last administration.. it’s crucial to our survival now.
HMC Rich… if we throw the b…ards out… who will we replace them with? The same party that brought us this mess in the first place?
Wouldn’t that be kind of .. well.. dumb?
March 18, 2009 at 6:34 pm #660929
EmmyJaneParticipantTo add to what JoB had to say: The bonuses were laid out in contracts made in March 2008, pre-Obama and pre-TARP.
Per a great opinion piece in the WSJ yesterday: “Scott Polakoff, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, told the Senate Banking Committee this month that, contrary to media myth, AIG’s infamous Financial Products unit did not slip through the regulatory cracks. Mr. Polakoff said that the whole of AIG, including this unit, was regulated by his agency and by a “college” of global bureaucrats…. And his agency wasn’t the only federal regulator. AIG’s Financial Products unit has been overseen for years by an SEC-approved monitor.”
If you want the whole article, PM me your email address and I’ll send it to you.
Now that the bonuses are paid, there is little the gov can do to get them back. It would cost more to legally pursue getting the money back than what would be returned.
March 18, 2009 at 6:49 pm #660930
JoBParticipantEmmyJane…
LOL.. if ever there was a case to be made for regulation reform.. Scott Polakoff’s assertion that AIG was regulated makes the case…
as for it being more expensive to legally pursue the money than we would get back.. i think not..
we have two expedient and cost effective courses available to us…
the first is that as the major shareholder, we force a reorganization… just short of bankruptcy reorganization but along the same lines…
We may not get the money back from the recipients, but we would get the money back from cost saving measures at AIG…
the second is that we file prosecutions for all the executives in that division for fraud.. and plea bargain the return of the bonuses :)
i don’t know.. is getting off the hook worth a million? it would be to me. ;->
March 18, 2009 at 7:17 pm #660931
JanSParticipantseems to me there is plenty of blame to go around EVERYWHERE…and that there are people in the world that forget that there was a world, an administration, etc. before Jan. 20, 2009. I’ve been watching the grilling of Ed Liddy this morning..it’s making my brain hurt. It’s giving a whole new meaning to “evasive” – lol…
March 18, 2009 at 7:28 pm #660932
EmmyJaneParticipantJoB- totally agree. I’m not going to mention the other institutions that the OTS “regulated” that collapsed in the last year. My point was simply that many people think there was no regulation of certain divisions of AIG.
I’m going to get attacked for this one…. but while I don’t agree with these bonuses idealogically, I believe they were probably necessary. Here is why: These were RETENTION bonuses (not performance bonuses) given to employees to remain with the company long enough to unwind the credit derivative swaps. I believe these bonuses were necessary to keep key employees around long enough to wind down the business. Would you stay with a company that you knew you had no future with and who was a liability on your resume without some incentive? In an ideal world these employees would have stayed on without the extra money because they had good ethics and believe they owed that much to the taxpayers, but this not an ideal world.
Another solution would have been to kick these losers to the curb and hire someone else to unwind the swaps. However these credit derivative swaps are incredibly complex and there are few who understand them enough to accomplish this. Therefore, I think the retention bonuses were necessary, although completely distasteful.
On a side note, it is my understanding that with a 80% stake in AIG, the federal reserve is overseeing their operations and a part of all major decisions/meetings. That means Bernanke was fully aware of the bonus payments and agreed to them, and now is coming out after the fact to speak out against them. Interesting…
March 18, 2009 at 7:43 pm #660933
EmmyJaneParticipantLiddy has been the head of AIG since Sept 2008 and receives a salary of $1. We can hardly blame him for what caused AIG to fail.
JoB- no need to force a reorg. Already underway with the supervision of the gov.
I like your second idea. :-) Lets do it! AIG is now asking anyone with a bonus over $100K to give back at least half.
March 18, 2009 at 8:42 pm #660934
JoBParticipantEmmy Jane…
i understand the rationale behind having the foxes teach us how to secure the hen house…
but paying them retention bonuses feels too much like accepting blackmail demands to me…
i say let’s sling their buts in jail and i bet they would do the work without bonuses…
after all.. the job market isn’t looking so good for them right now and even an accusation of fraud is enough to sour job prospects…
ok… so i admit…. that would be blackmail on our part… dang….
March 18, 2009 at 10:46 pm #660935
JiggersMemberThe bottom line is that they are all hypocrites. Why didn’t they invistigate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well. The A.I.G. bonuses are all under a contract and drawn up way before this BS started. If I were an A.I.G. executive, I wouldn’t give one cent back, srew them. You live and learn.
AIG = and its gone!!
March 18, 2009 at 11:00 pm #660936
JoBParticipantjiggers…
how much are you willing to pay for this lesson?
do you define winning as walking away with the cash if you have to pay the tab for a game you weren’t invited to play?
March 18, 2009 at 11:00 pm #660937
LexMemberAre you serious? Are you really blaming the current administration for this mess. What calendar are you looking at? This mess started in September, the election was in NOvember. Not to mention that it took years for us to get here, years of the government looking the other way or better yet not paying attention. Don’t blame AIG for this they agreed to these bonuses a long time ago as ridiculas as it was. But who is the bigger ass the company that follows through on what the promised in a contract to their employees or the idiots that gave tax payer dollars without stipulations on use of the dollars and a repayment plan. this floors me that the very entities that are getting bailouts are the ones that if I went in for a loan would give me stipulations on how to use it and want to establish a repayment plan and if I didn’t have a repayment plan they wouldn’t give me the dollars. I say let GM fail Let AIG fail let those that have their hands sticking out fail or restruture like the airlines had to. sink or swim. In GMs case you can thank the union for some of your issues paying an individual $75 to place a screw on a car..really? this is why i love Ford. they haven’t taken a dime todate and I hope they survive this mess. it sickens me to think tha tour children and grand children have to pay for this mess and what point does the government say enough!! When do they start bailing out the unemployed the very people that helped to build this nation and the infrastruture that is falling apart right now? Our schools are a mess because they have no money; our unemployment rate is out of this world, what happens when the benefits dry up? screw giving funds for roads and all those other stupid projects, give to our schools to the small business owners so they can stay afloat….what country is this again?
March 18, 2009 at 11:08 pm #660938
JoBParticipantLex..
FORD may not have taken a dime…
but they did close their plant in Minnesota that made one of their most popular products the Ford Ranger… and that is just the closure i am familiar with…
you can blame it on the unions if you want to…
But you might ask yourself if they would all have done better if they had produced products that were more competitive not only in price but in features…
if they had produced vastly more fuel efficient cars.. would they have been facing failure now?
March 19, 2009 at 3:45 am #660939
rockhillsMemberI try, I really try to stay out of these threads after the posts start generalizing politicians to parties. This is the problem with the whole two-party system. You vote on an individual politician or a specific issue, and suddenly you are associated with a bunch of turkeys. Without exception. Because they are–guess what? Politicians. I say we impose term limits on our congress. Who would replace the dinosaurs? People (of either party) who have not lost touch with reality.
But I digress.
Our current mess is the culmination of dumb or greedy decisions by members–both executive and legislative-of both parties over more than a decade. As Jiggers and Lex pointed out, the bonuses were agreed to long before the public woke up. The bonuses should have been limited long ago, along with all the rest of the over-the-top expenditures. But if they were written into the executives’ contracts (and no, I haven’t researched to find that out, so if you know differently, please let us know,) they have every right to demand their contractual benefits. Then, we should fire and prosecute their booties.
March 19, 2009 at 6:53 am #660940
HMC RichParticipantI never said it was a Democratic scandal. That is understood. Just kidding. For once I was being fair and balanced, but you know my leanings. Enough of the flippancy.
People have known about the bonuses for awhile. I hate it when they (congress) acts surprised. I found the data interesting, that is all. I will say this. Why does Dodd keep cropping up with “problems” with AIG or Countrywide. At least the press is reporting something.
I also think Franklin Raines and crew at Fannie and Freddie (who made multi millions in bonuses) need to be looked into also. Should they give back their bonuses? Being a bad business isn’t against the law. Being illegal in business is.
Yes, the Republicans need to take blame too but they did not deny problems like Mr. Frank kept doing. Either side is making YOU and I pay for their greed or mismanagement. We are the ones getting screwed.
March 19, 2009 at 9:46 am #660941
JanSParticipantMy take on bonuses? There IS no contract for a bonus…no expectation of something to come, whether you did good or did bad. Geez. let’s make it a surprise, like the Christmas bonus tht I got (or didn’t) when things in the company went well.. If it’s already written in, it’s not a damned bonus, it’s a salary…JMO.
Let’s face it…we give multi-million “sign-up” bonuses to professional athletes, we give Boeing workers a Christmas present every year, disguised as a “bonus” written into their contract (how many strikes have been lengthened byt the fact that they couldn’t agree on the bonus amount?). It’s the norm, no longer used as incentive to do good work…it’s just expected. So, in a way, we, as a society, have done this to ourselves. That’s what needs to change…the “me, me, me” thing…let’s see how much I can get without having to do anything in return. These guys make plenty, without giving them an extra reward for …well, for what, I”m not sure. A year ago I couldn’t tell you that I had ever heard of AIG….and now it’s the most prominent news story we have… Blech !!
March 26, 2009 at 12:37 am #660942
alki_2008ParticipantWell JanS – there is a contract when it’s a “Retention” bonus. As in, ‘continue to work for this company, and refuse to pursue another stable job offer, for X months and we will pay you $xx at the end of those X months’. That is what many people that stayed at AIG were offered, and most of those people were not involved in making the types of decisions that caused AIG to fail in the first place.
‘Performance’ bonuses are a different story, but even with perf bonuses…there are many AIG employees that had no role in AIG’s failure. Many people had job roles that didn’t set policies, and if they did their jobs well according to the specifics of their roles…then they should be entitled to some amount of a performance bonus. Some of that performance bonus would be based on their own personal performance, and another percentage would be based on the company’s performance…so they probably wouldn’t get as much as in successful years, but still something for the personal performance part.
March 26, 2009 at 1:03 am #660943
JanSParticipantthat’s true…I feel for those at AIG, the “underlings”, if you will, who were maybe gonna get 1K or there abouts…
it’s nice to know that quite a few of those biggies have given their bonuses back.
and then I’m reminded about the company in the news just yesterday where the entire employee list agreed to take a cut, so as to keep the company from laying people off…
we are all in this together, I think…it’s a shame that the people higher up in these companies aren’t always in it for anything more than themselves.
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