From the wires:
WASHINGTON (AP) — American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars. AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments. The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.
That is gross. Take a penny of my tax dollars…no more bonuses should be the common sense rule.
March 15th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Boycot AIG!!! This is an outrage!
March 15th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
How many execs do you think will decline their bonuses on the principle of hypocricy?
March 15th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I think every one of them should be tossed in jail, their holdings auctioned off , and their bank accounts emptied, (on shore and off shore) so the people they screwed could be reimbursed …. just like ol bernie boy.
This list includes a great many of our politicians as well.
March 15th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
They always say its because they need to retain “the best and the brightest”. Where else are they gonna go!?
I agree with Michael on this, if there is another AIG bailout bonuses need to be suspended.
March 16th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Reason why not to base investment on flawed “fundamental” analysis but only on price trend.
http://www.reuters.com/article/fundsFundsNews/idUSN1346771520090316
Most of companies have accounting books so skewed that you don’t know what to think of their operations, do they have accounting practices that are overly complicated or are they just manufacturing accounting data (i would go long on 2nd option :).
March 16th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Gang, Those bonunses were all in British Isles, and AIG could not get out of the contracts. They made the decision to pay after realizing the legal costs would be double the actual payout, as they would be breaking a contract and English law doesn’t allow that. AIG was in a rock and a hard place on this one.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Joseph:
Easy to solve that one. Fire every one of ‘em. No Job, no bonus.
March 16th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Joseph,
What is the legal value of those contracts if AIG simply was bankrupt? Which they really are? The whole problem here is the stupid haste in which they were bailed out. The financial monkeys are smart enough to circumvent EXISTING LAWS. How smart are they going to be when there are NO STRINGS whatsoever on free taxpayer money they r getting?