AIG Bonuses
The answer is simple: These are retention bonuses, so you don’t retain these people.
There are a lot of unemployed people who didn’t lose $60+ billion, so you say goodbye to those who want bonuses, and say hello to those who want jobs, at lower than previous salaries.
If they want to get nasty about it, those people who are due to get bonuses could legally be denied unemployment benefits as losing that much money surely counts as an unsatisfactory job performance and justifies firing them for cause.
AIG is a very public company at this point with the taxpayers as its largest single investor, so the corporation really is required to justify the retention of these people after their dismal record.
Don’t retain them and don’t pay the bonuses. That is the way real businesses operate in the free market.
14 comments
Yeah, that whole “we must pay these people all these bonuses to retain them” just do esn’t fly. There’s plenty of out-of-work people who did NOT lose $200B+ who could do just as well at losing money in those jobs (heh!). If they don’t want to stay… f*** them.
– Badtux the Ruthless Penguin
Badtux´s last blog post..A summary of U.S. interrogation policy
All of the angst about this is juvenile. This isn’t a management decision, it is basic supervision at the junior level. It’s no wonder these people lost money if this is the level of their competence.
Geez…so simple.
cookie jill´s last blog post..skippy’s monday nite music club
In the military they pay retention/re-enlistment bonuses for people who risk their lives or have needed skills, but you must be cleared for re-enlistment.
As near as I can tell these people are at the center of the destruction of the corporation. This makes no sense at all.
I hope Cuomo goes after them. Screw the Fed. Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Moi;)´s last blog post..He’s Gonna Make ‘Em an Offer…
Calvin (Calvin and Hobbs) succinctly exemplifies Capitalist ideals in the latest ‘toon strip:
Calvin the Capitalist
See, very simple really! 😈
Ooh! And another hit, from Jonathon Hurley! (I never met a lawyer I liked before… Amazing!) 😉
Home run!! And the crowd go’s wild…. 😆
More + Video & C&L:
Jonathan Turley Questions Whether We Can Recoup Bonus Money From Individuals at AIG
BTW, it seems C&L Have the above Calvin ‘toon up also. But I got it direct from the Calvin site.
Cuomo will go after them, Moi. He wants to be governor or Senator of New York and there are a lot of votes to be had going after big criminals like AIG. [innocent until proven guilty, etc., but they don’t want me on the jury.]
The pursuit of short term profits to the exclusion of long term viability is the disease of the current corporate leadership. They are “selling their seed” to make money this quarter without thinking about the future.
The reality is that these people don’t know how to run a business, and they have resorted to gambling to make money.
I don’t understand why anyone would even want to retain these people. Let them go.
Ooops… today I read that many of these are ex-employees. And that the Democrats, who are acting all outraged, were told to put the language in the bill to allow the bonus payments, because if they didn’t the employees might quit. Huh? That makes no sense since they should be fired anyway.
There’s a lot of anger out there and not all of it is directed at AIG. I’m furious with our government. They don’t know what they are doing and they are being led around by the ass by special interests… this is painfully obvious to everybody, you don’t even need a business degree to figure it out. Stop the bailouts. It’s not helping.
LadyMin´s last blog post..Sci Fi = SyFy … Really Now?
The new administration felt the need to appoint people that Wall Street was comfortable with, and now we know why they were comfortable.
I don’t want, and we don’t need, Wall Street to be comfortable. The people in charge are the ones who created this mess and they should be worried about prison, not bonuses.
I sure it came as a big shock to policy holders along the Gulf Coast who have been battling with insurance companies for years over payment, that contracts are inviolate in the opinion of insurance company attorneys.
Well… This will be very interesting! Passing a law and actually enforcing it, are two very different things. I’ll believe it when I see the IRS auditing them and levying the tax, and receiving payments. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of *Chapter 11* and other shenanigans going on. I wonder how big the tax refunds will be if the IRS does collect? Considering several Repugs voted for this, there are certain to be loopholes.
HOUSE passes bill to tax 90% of AIG bonuses
This is getting into unconstitutional “bill of attainder” territory. I think a better approach would be a grand jury and fraud investigation, because if these people really did know what was going on, they had to know it was fraud. When they sold these things the corporation did not have the assets to pay them off, so it was fraud.
Grand jury will never happen because you know the finger will point all the way back to the Whitehouse. Will never happen.
Actually, I think that is exactly where New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo is headed. He wants to be a Senator or the governor, and this case will do it.
New York has already got a lot of material on AIG from earlier investigations, and the corporation may even be in violation of the settlements in some of those cases.
The Feds may not be interested, but the state of New York is and if you think people are angry about bonuses, wait until AIG starts paying criminal fines to the state of New York with bailout money.