AIG: That's where your money goes, supporting those parasitic "patriots"

Contractually obligated???

When a bankruptcy happens, all bets are off, and those "contractual obligations" should be rendered null and void. Now I realize this was not a true bankruptcy according to the legal definition, but still!!! Is this not some kind of a restructuring?? Was there NOTHING in their "contractual obligatons" which stipulated that the bonuses could be denied if they were found to be incompetant morons????



How about we fix it like this: offer every last one of those executives a Lee Iococca deal whereby the executives are sweetly asked pretty please if they will forego their bonuses for three years running just to see if the company will improve.

It worked for Chrysler, right?

Let's make the deal even better: we will publish in the media the names of every last executive, and also publish how much their bonus was, and also publish which executives chose to relinquish the bonuses and which ones did not.

We're screwed leaving the idiots running these business in power. They should have all been fired to receive any bailout money.

The same mistakes they have made will be made all over again. We'll be right back in this same boat in a few more years.

I wonder... Is this what rome was like in it's decline?

Joe270 said:

We're screwed leaving the idiots running these business in power. They should have all been fired to receive any bailout money.

The same mistakes they have made will be made all over again. We'll be right back in this same boat in a few more years.

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What makes you think we'll be out of the boat in a few more years? We're still in it and it's still sinking.

StarDrifter said:

I wonder... Is this what rome was like in it's decline?

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Yes.

*oh, snap*

I wish someone had likened "contractual obligations" to "collective bargaining" or "labor negotiations" before writing the check.

StarDrifter said:

I wonder... Is this what rome was like in it's decline?

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Actually, yes it was.

Creditors were foreclosing and finally the local princes got together and asked, "Why are we sending taxes to that twit that calls himself emperor?"

...and then it was over, no battle, just some whining in the night.

GeorgeK said:

Actually, yes it was.

Creditors were foreclosing and finally the local princes got together and asked, "Why are we sending taxes to that twit that calls himself emperor?"

...and then it was over, no battle, just some whining in the night.

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From NaturalNews

Nine state legislatures have either passed or introduced bills intended to reaffirm their state's sovereignty as laid out in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Constitution. Another twenty states are expected to introduce similar measures this year. While the ramifications of these resolutions are still uncertain, one thing is clear. People are sick and tired of the federal government's usurpation of power not granted to it by the Constitution. They have had enough of fear based economic terrorism and underhanded promotion of policies and procedures that bypass public scrutiny and the will of the people.

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From OpEdNews (not much of an article, except for the data)

A growing number of states are declaring their sovereignty afforded under the U S Constitution’s Tenth Amendment however the conventional news media are not telling you about what is happening. The State of Washington on Wednesday - 11 February 2009 and most recently, New Hampshire [2009], Montana [2009], Hawaii [2009], Michigan [2009], Missouri [2009], Arizona [2008], Oklahoma [2008], Georgia [1996], and California [1994] all of which have introduced bills and resolutions declaring and reaffirming their sovereignty. Some other states have done this in the past but then let the issue go. Additionally, the states of Colorado, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Alaska, Kansas, Alabama, Nevada, Maine, and Illinois are considering similar measures. More well may follow, such as Wyoming and Mississippi.

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The next few years are going to be interesting.

I am starting to REALLY understand why there is such a significant segment of the British population that wants to do away with the monarchy. Why are our tax dollars being funelled by the billions into perpetually sustaining the priviledges and high social rank of a spoiled elite full of self-important do-nothings?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/14/aig.bonuses/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Supposedly they are reducing them, but how can AIG use the claim that they need the bonuses to retain the "brightest" executives?

From NaturalNews

Quote:
Nine state legislatures have either passed or introduced bills intended to reaffirm their state's sovereignty as laid out in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Constitution. Another twenty states are expected to introduce similar measures this year. While the ramifications of these resolutions are still uncertain, one thing is clear. People are sick and tired of the federal government's usurpation of power not granted to it by the Constitution. They have had enough of fear based economic terrorism and underhanded promotion of policies and procedures that bypass public scrutiny and the will of the people.

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It's probably deeper than this. Nevada isn't mentioned, but there is great outrage here that the state got shafted badly in the 'stimulus' bill. One tenth of one percent of the 800+ billion. Gee, thanks.

The talk here is that we get so small a proportion of fed dollars, much less than the amount we pay into the pot, that we should 'bow out' of the fed system altogether and keep our tax dollars local.

And we all laughed at that Russian guy who predicted that the United States would splinter into smaller unions.

I laughed also.

I'm not laughing now. I can actually, for the first time, visualize something like this happening in the next fifty years.

brokenfingers said:

And we all laughed at that Russian guy who predicted that the United States would splinter into smaller unions.

I laughed also.

I'm not laughing now. I can actually, for the first time, visualize something like this happening in the next fifty years.

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Oddly enough, he's not backing down from his prediction:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/04/igor-panarin-us-will-coll_n_171725.html

2011=New World Order.

robeiae said:

2011=New World Order.

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Whatever happened to 2012??

Did AIG actually have a bunch of employees whose contracts included "If the economy goes in the tank and we're so screwed that we have to accept a government bailout? You get a bonus!"

I am so confused about these bailouts. I've read until smoke pours out of one or more orifice on my head. (I've been too afraid to check anywhere else.)

And now I'm confused about the definition of the word 'bonus'. Isn't bonus money tied, usually, to profits or performance? Is there any department in AIG, outside perhaps their janitorial staff, that produced a result that satisfies any goal?

Williebee said:

Did AIG actually have a bunch of employees whose contracts included "If the economy goes in the tank and we're so screwed that we have to accept a government bailout? You get a bonus!"

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Perks said:

And now I'm confused about the definition of the word 'bonus'. Isn't bonus money tied, usually, to profits or performance?

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To both of you:

Superstar athletes have "signing bonuses" which means that when they first get hired by a pro sports team, they automatically get some outrageous sum of money from the get-go just for signing the contract. So then if they quit or get fired or get permanently injured just ten minutes after signing the contract, that outrageous sum is STILL theirs no matter what

Same with these top execs. Their contracts say they get these fat bonuses no matter what. No. Matter. What.

The thing is that I'll just bet that if AIG decided to say "no" anyway, the next logical step would have been for the executives to sue. And then if it came down to a civil lawsuit, the attorneys for the plantiffs would have had a hell of a time trying to pick an unprejudiced jury. Kinda like in the Steve Martin movie The Jerk. Just TRY to find twelve entire people somewhere in this nation who were in no way impacted by what these companies did.

Plot Device said:

...
Let's make the deal even better: we will publish in the media the names of every last executive, and also publish how much their bonus was, and also publish which executives chose to relinquish the bonuses and which ones did not.

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I thought all these things were pretty much public record anyway. Or are all these executive compensation packages somehow leaked out?

But yeah, bonuses are not necessarily tied to performance, but often to milestones of time on the job, and for an exec of that level it's surely written into the contract.

At a small company I was at some years ago, one Christmas dinner was interesting - the President started handing out envelopes. Every employee (about 25 or 30) got a bonus of $1000 cash.

I recall a story about Burger King near New Orleans in the months after Katrina having a hard time getting employees. They were paying $10 an hour, and if you stayed at the job three months you got a bonus of several thousand dollars.

The "solution" to this "problem" is to fully nationalize such a company and pay every employee the same amount. That way the principals will get jobs elsewhere and will no longer have anything to do with running the business into the ground. And they may get into some business other than banking where they don't have to compete with a government-owned company that doesn't have to make a profit to survive.

OMG, Gabriel's horn must have just sounded. Ben called for nationalization of a private company.

Interesting reading here: Millions in AIG bonuses ignite bipartisan fire.

But they agreed it was unclear what, if anything, the government can do to cut the bonuses since the contracts seem legally binding.

"We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts," Summers told ABC's "This Week."

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Not true. ~165 different treaties with the Native Americans and the government broke every damn one of them. It continues to this day.

They jolly well could if they wanted to do so.

AIG Chairman Edward Liddy wrote Geithner.
AIG had promised to pay about $1 billion in retention bonuses over a period of several years, half of which has already been paid.
Liddy, in his letter to Geithner, said the firm was legally obligated to make already-committed 2008 employee-retention payments, the value of which were set early last year before problems at its Financial Products unit became public.

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But not before they knew the company was in trouble, but before everyone else knew they were in trouble. Like us. And the Feds that bailed them out. Sounds like a good reason to break a contract to me.

And I'd really like to know what he meant by this:

Republican Senator Bob Corker, appearing with Frank, said corporate recipients of federal bailouts should "have to play by a different set of rules, and hopefully that will cause institutions across this country not to want to take government money" and face increased federal scrutiny.

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They already play by a "different set of rules". That's obvious.

My take away from that statement is 'don't take government money if you don't want a microscope inserted into your fiscal malfeasance.'

benbradley said:

I thought all these things were pretty much public record anyway. Or are all these executive compensation packages somehow leaked out?

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I want a two-page spread in the New York Times with four columns in it.

Column #1 ........ Column #2 ..... Column #3 ............. Column #4
Professional ......... His name ......... Exact amount .......... YES or NO
head-shot ........... and rank ...........of his bonus ............ Did he accept
photo of .............. at AIG ........................................... the bonus?
the executive ............................................................. Or did he
................................................................................ relinquish it?



I think this is perfectly reasonable.






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Column 5 - Home Phone Number
Column 6 - Home Address
Column 7 - License Plate Number