Excuse me, I’d have a hard time explaining my paycheck, never mind a bonus for running a company into the ground and taking the global economy with it.
Apparently, the people at AIG don’t realize they should be getting shot and then burned at the stake. Instead they are claiming they requite bonuses to keep them there, doing such a great job at losing money at record rates.
Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.
via A.I.G. to Pay $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout – NYTimes.com [1].
I’m sorry, duty, honor, country. I think it’s time to send these “executives” to the front lines in Afghanistan with bows and arrows, and let’s see their “superior intellect” get them out alive.
When Lee Iaccoca took over a bailed-out Chrysler, he did it for a buck a year. Our country is at war, our economy is on the brink, hard working people are losing their jobs and their homes, and these cretins want to pay themselves bonuses with tax dollars to right a ship they sunk intentionally for their own edification?
Firing squad. Now. Please.
This is sick. Why in the world are we helping these companies that keep sending millions to people who do not know how to run a company? Furthermore, I fear this is just the tip of the iceberg–there are so many ways these funds are hurting ‘average Joes’ but benefiting those in high places. Look what Enterprise rent-a-car did to get bailout funds:
http://www.butasforme.com/2009/02/25/alert-enterprise-rent-a-car-may-have-fired-employees-as-fake-evidence-when-lobbing-for-bailout-money/
Didn’t Obama say something about bonuses in when the last bailout went out? I don’t know why the Federal Government can’t simply recall the funds. No one can make a case that paying “extra” money (what a bonus is by definition) to incompetent executives is essential to keeping the business from floundering. This is a flagrant abuse and should be punished. I know you’re a fan of the DP, David, but really, I’d settle for seeing them in prison.
What’s DP, Larkin?
Let these “stellar performers” find another company to bankrupt! The incessant pounding of ones chest, works well in the ape world. Not to be confused with good business practices. When business is bad…cut the fat!
The cost of internment is far too high to contain the “bernie madoffs” of this world….now we have a great use for space shuttles approaching retirement……..
DP=Death Penalty.
Chuck, it costs approximately $450 million for every space shuttle launch. (Again, your tax dollars at work!) That buys quite a beans and weenies at the big house.
Whoops, that quite a FEW beans and weenies.
The best example yet as to why we should not be bailing out irresponsible behavior. As ugly as it is the market has to correct itself, not through government intervention. Big O said he was not going to tolerate this after the first round, let’s see what he does about this.
same can be said of individuals and receiving welfare checks and food stamps – the ol’ “bailing out irresponsible behavior”
of course not all individuals are irresponsible, nor are all businesses. I love the double standard of the liberals.
I say let people and businesses fail – frick em all.
Dear Gene.
The “budget” for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (what we all used to call “Welfare”) is 1.5 billion dollars for the period between 2006 and 2011. That’s less than ten percent of the “welfare” check the feds gave AIG, and there is no line item in TANF for “bonuses” for incompetent executives. I know you love to tilt at windmills, but really, sometimes …
Sorry, migraines impair my math abilities (and heck I didn’t even go to school in Dayton)…. The entire budget for “welfare” for individuals is less than one percent of what we, the tax payers, have handed down to AIG.
More to the point, how can AIG possibly survive? Who would buy a financial product from them?
It is not about the total money – it is principle. Welfare for people or business if flat out wrong, or at least welfare handed out by government. Welfare should be left up to people and organizations who want to do it. Government always screws it up. It does not matter if it is a dollar or $689043.00. It is the principle of hand outs. I think welfare monies should go to national health care, local organizations help with food, and maybe then a person may find it in themselves to get off their ass and work a little bit. 10 hours a week with FREE everything else can get you by. Heck, our welfare recipients have hdtvs, are fat, have $200 shoes, eat out at McDonalds all the time. Seems to me they are better off then people who bother to work.
Incompetent executives and incompetent people should receive nothing. They did not work for it.
DP could also stand for “double penetration”, especially in prison or porn.
“Seems to me they are better off then people who bother to work.”
So I take it you’ll be quitting your job and going on welfare and foodstamps, Gene? Why shouldn’t you also enjoy the lush life?
I am independently wealthy, :) or close enough, to not have to go on food stamps or receive welfare. I work. I enjoy it to a certain degree. I want to work. but I also don’t have 9 expensive and unwanted kids, huge TVs i bought before I bought food, huge credit card bills that has vacations and alcohol or eating out charged to them.
But why do people who receive food stamps and welfare have huge TVs, tattoos, eat out all the time, drink Starbucks, have $200 shoes. These people are just as bad as you AIG bunch, but somehow they do it int the name of poverty.
lush life…………..?…………….. maybe not lush, certainly not POVERTY as defined by any adult.
Last time I saw the definition of poverty I did not see a 50 inch Samsung in the background, or 67 empty bags of McDonalds. Get a clue folks- we get F*CKed from both ends.
A good word here for the AIG bunch, Sepuku.
I’m amazed that some would argue that it’s important to keep these exec’s on board because only they will be able to straighten out the mess that THEY made….that sounds like extortion to me.
And Gene- aren’t you even a little bit miffed that these folks have some of your tax dollars too?
A lot miffed that at all levels people received tax dollars in the name of welfare, business or otherwise.
I don’t know when it became our responsibility to bail people out. It really gets old. I don’t think the majority of us were put on this earth to work so others may get it (our tax dollars) – sorry, this includes poor people. I rather donate my time and my money, which I do, rather than get taxed by the monstrous government to re-distribute to people who don’t want to work or want to cheat the system. It really does get old.
Government is the enemy, our politicians like BO have done nothing but burden the average guy. GWB screwed us and I don’t see BO being an improvement. Government, in the minds of all most all politicians, rep and dem alike, is to feed their machine in the name of money we earn. How the hell is that fair? we get screwed and most of us smile and take it. Again, it gets old.
BTW, on you hospital bill overcharging, a friend had a baby and a line item of MISC EXPENSES was $8500.00. Misc expenses, f*ck, if we all did that with our businesses where would we be?
@gene, I’m still waiting for your donation to my campaign.
Steven Perlstein with the Washington Posts correctly suggest that everyone puts down the pitchforks and torches:
“…there’s a danger in letting this outrage get to the point that it undermines the effort to contain the financial crisis. And with Congress now rushing to pass legislation taxing away the bonuses of every banker at every bank or financial institution that takes government money, that point seems to have been reached.
A few things to keep in mind.
First, as I’ve said in the past, this isn’t about fairness. There’s nothing remotely fair about using taxpayer money to rescue a free-market financial system from the mistakes of the financiers. But the reality is that we can punish the bankers or we can save the banking system, but we can’t do both at the same time.
Nor is it fair, as The Great Santelli has declared on CNBC, that homeowners who have paid their bills and have been careful not to take on too much credit are now being asked to provide relief to homeowners who have not. Unfortunately, the price of righteous indignation is a wave of foreclosures, a further decline in home values and billions of dollars of additional loan losses at banks that are already on government life support. Given the financial and economic hits they have already taken, that’s a price that most “innocent” homeowners and taxpayers would probably prefer not to pay.
During a financial crisis, fairness is a luxury we cannot afford. During the 1930s, bankers and financiers lost everything, but the outcome — a decade-long depression — was hardly fair to the ordinary American. The key question is not whether something is fair, but whether it helps get us through this mess faster and at a lower cost.”
Yes AIG are a bunch of money-grubbing scumbags…but they are scumbags vital to fixing the economy.