Letter from an AIG VP who got a $1M bonus

The guy said he was raised by schoolteachers, and went to MIT on scholarship, so I don't think he was belittling teachers and nurses or anything.

That alternet article had some good points on the overall issue, but what person A is responsible in a 377 person company and what person B is responsible for are pretty different. If the point is that it is wrong to feel sympathy for anyone who has ever done better than oneself financially, that kinda seems like spitting on the American dream, given that this particular AIG guy claims to have pulled himself up by his bootstraps and nobody seems to be disputing his backstory.

Dont you understand these scumbags almost collapsed the financial industry? How about all the people that dont have millions who got laid off or lost everything because of these guys actions.

In big business, although it may be nice to have a card which says VP, there are generally many vice presidents, so no specific one is likely to be second in command. From what those articles say the division called "financial products" did not handle the products which nearly sank (and probably should have sunk) the company.

It is like people who do not work in online adult do not understand what someone who is primarily an affiliate means when they say they do not run "sites". Yes, of course they have sites by the definition of the word, but industry people know they mean they do not have membership sites. Yes, of course insuring banks for their poorly-considered loans might be considered a financial service, but that is clearly not what people in that industry mean by it.

I think the point of that op ed to the NYT is that the scumbags who almost collapsed the specific financial industry are escaping in their gold parachutes and leaving non-scumbags taking the blame for others' misdeeds.

Yeah he made millions,mit grad but had no idea what was going on.

So.... where then are all those people responsible for "the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung AIG"?

This whole thing seems just a little bit like postwar Germany in 1945 wherein all the Nazi's seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.

Whether or not he took time out of his 12 hour workdays to check on what other divisions were doing, why is what somebody else did his fault? What should he have done instead?

Wouldn't it make more sense to penalize the people, particularly the managers, in the divisions which actually presided over the disastrous stuff?

Wouldn't it make more sense to penalize entities like Bank of America who grandstanded to get bailout money and claim they can't figure out what they did with it, when they are bankers, so their whole job is to track money?

Funny the way that works. They are all saying it was basically one guy. Yeah I believe that.

hmmmmmmmmm

You're doing the same thing the guy with the second letter did, using emotional arguments to divert attention away from the facts.

Let's make the argument about guys getting bonuses with taxpayer money and say that Snake Doctor doesn't understand what's going on so he uses "big confusing words" to obfuscate. (Yes that last word was put there because I love irony)

At the end of the day, and this is fact, nobody "in the know" disputes this.....if those people weren't kept on staff, by using the retention bonuses, the taxpayers would have lost more money.
It would take months and months for auditors to figure everything out in order to complete a sale (and there is a time value on money), and it's very very likely that the sale price of those assets would be lower.
They need people there who know what's going on in order to facilitate the sale of the different divisions/assets.

So you can burn AIG to the ground, and your $200 billion or so along with it, or you can live with these guys getting bonuses, and get a large portion of that $200 billion back.
You can take a bite of a shit sandwich or you can drown in a shit storm.

Unfortunately I can hear most of you saying "take that bitch" to your face, while you cut off your nose.

Let's try it this way.

Let's fire everyone at AIG. Every single one of them, with no severance.....let's not even let them collect unemployment insurance.

Now that we all feel better, let's talk about that 200 billion dollars we gave that company.
The only way we can get that back is to sell the assets and the profitable divisions of the company. Of course to do that, we're going to need some people working there to keep the company open.
If it's 100% closed, then it's out of business, the contracts and policies are null and void, no premiums are being collected, and there's nothing to sell.

So now we have to hire some people, but what are we going to pay them with? The company is bankrupt, being kept afloat by the government because if it collapses all at once it'll wreak havoc on the financial system the way Lehman did.
So I guess we're going to have to hire some people and pay them with the money the government gave us.

Of course, how are we going to hire qualified people when they know this is only a temporary job? They know the company is being broken apart and sold so this job won't last very long. How do you get them to leave the job they're at, that's permanent, to come work here temporarily?

Oh, oh, I know, let's offer them a healthy bonus payment that they'll get once the job is done.

So now, we all feel better that we fired everyone at AIG and really stuck it to them. Then we had to hire people with taxpayer money who didn't know what was going on, give them time to figure out what was going on, so they could sell the pieces....all the while pumping billions into the company to keep it afloat while these new people figured out where the toner was........and then once they sold the pieces and wound the company down, we could pay them the bonus that we didn't want to give to the people who were already there.

So it costs $300 billion to feel better, and it costs $200 billion to live with things the way they are.

Yeah fuck it, let's fire everyone. :rollseyes

That letter is bogus and more for the press...he is lucky he is not in prison. Sorry he had to give back his $700,000 bonus, but most people take 30 years to make that some of money. I have no sympathey for him at all, especially living in NY where the middle class cannot survive. You need to be poor (so you can live off the government) or Rich (so you don't have to give a fuck).

In my opinion only doctors are worth big money.

Wow, some people are really dense. Nobody pays attention to detail, it's no wonder so many people thought Obama was a Muslim during the campaign.

1) Why should be be in prison? He had nothing to do with the credit default swap business that bankrupted the company, and
1a) Nothing the CDS division did was illegal. It was stupid to be sure, but not illegal

2) He didn't have to give back his bonus. He is choosing to give it to charity.

3) What difference does it make how much he earns compared to other people? The guy went to MIT and rose to the level of corporate VP. You think he should get paid the same as a garbage collector?

4) Nobody is forcing anyone to live in New York. This is a free country, you can move to wherever you want to.

You've misunderstood this whole thing so many times in one paragraph I'm amazed you were able to type that many words without passing out.

As you see my post is out of anger and frustration over AIG and the whole bailout.

#1 I would have voted for obama if he was green = we need any type of change...and mccain that mummy would have put me to sleep watching his speaches.

#2 Fuck charity...give the money back...american tax payers now need charity.

#3 I don't care what prestigious college he went to...where they breed nerds...he is no better than a garbage collector. Why cause he got a piece of paper and was taught how to do his job.

4# Free where? Last I remembered you can't just buy land and live off it. Something called taxes. and you are going to see less freedom in america, with survalience cameras, etc. In this country you can be sued for anything...how is that freedom?

5# I would love to move to Cali, or even Japan...but in 1910 my relatves settled in NYC so....

I do enjoy your posts, but I am pissed with my money being taken left and right.

What change ?

One team of crooks has just been replaced by another team of crooks. You have a black man who talks pretty but its just the same old .. there has been no change, and some say this group of crooks is possibly worse than the last lot.