So here the author provides a counter point. That, despite the inexcusable bonus, we should let that pass. Now that we have invested into 80% of the company, we don’t want to scare off the people from leaving. Then, all that we put in as taxpayers would surely be lost. And since these were contracts written prior to AIG’s million mile fall, contracts should be honored.
I can kind of see that. This was why I wish we had let AIG flop instead. Insuring what was bound to be a catastrophic failure of sub-prime mortgage, they and whoever invested in them should fail. Yes, it would send the world economy into depression perhaps, but we are almost there already despite having invested so much in trying to prevent it.
But again, to counter the counter point, the gov’t paying to own 80% of AIG = “hostile takeover”. That’s what this is… and when it’s a hostile takeover, previous stuff shouldn’t apply~!
News is that the federal government knew about this last year (I think Senator Dodd added some amendment somewhere to protect these retention bonuses) and that Geithner, our treasury secretary, knew about the details of this since at least last week.
Now all of these actors that knew about it all along are suddenly outraged, but I guess this is all just politics as usual in DC.
Where is that source from??!! If it’s true that those politicians knew beforehand, they should be hung first!
nypost:
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/03182009/postopinion/editorials/manufactured_outrage_160070.htm
AP:
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=45225
Again, for me, the bonuses are small fries – the real focus I think should be on this money laundering thing where billions are being funneled to other banks.
As you stated, the federal government owns 80 percent – I was reading about an interview with Jack Welch and I agree with him. Instead of the politicians acting out with this hypocritical, faux outrage – they should be acting like a board of directors and work with the CEO of AIG and other executives (all of whom btw from what I read did not get these bonuses) to work on these issues and make sure that the tax payers get a return on their ‘investment’. But of course perhaps asking these politicians to act like responsible people would probably be too much….