Political Discussions
More Bonuses for the SOBs Who Destroyed Our Economy
Posted by satijournal • 7/10/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: aig, Economy, politics
American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.
The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.
The request puts the administration's new compensation czar on the spot by seeking his opinion about bonuses that were promised long before he took his post.
AIG doesn't actually need the permission of Kenneth R. Feinberg, who President Obama appointed last month to oversee the compensation of top executives at seven firms that have received large federal bailouts. But officials at AIG, whose federal rescue package stands at $180 billion, have been reluctant to move forward without political cover from the government.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070902702.ht...
The rationale is they need to pay bonuses to retain the high caliber CEOs who ran the company and our economy into the ground. What horse crap.
User Comments
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The problem satj is that these are no longer businesses pursuing profit (something which at this point is largely an impossibility, as their business model is broken, their market is gone, and their entire beauracratic apparatus has collapsed) but instead welfare queens working off the government dough, and that the sooner we unplug em the sooner we can get past this whole mess.-
So when you see the welfare queens outside the welfare office smoking their $7 pack of cigs and wearing their designer jeans, and talking on their $200 cel-phone you rationalize that too? -
What gets me is homeless people smoking and asking for handouts. You could feed a family of four for the price of a pack of cigarettes.
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I was making an analogy, but yeah... i don't think most are actually homeless
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@Agit8r: "rationalize." Hmmm. I think you might have misused that word as it is usually used to mean excuse and I'm literally saying bring out the old chopping block and butcher these ********s down to hamburger.
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oh, I see. I missinterpreted what you meant. My bad
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Thanks.
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I'm just going to throw this out there.....
What the hell are the shareholders doing? They are the ones who are supposed to be in control of this sort of thing - yes? They have the ability to hire/fire give/take away bonuses, yes?
Why are they sitting on their rumps? (And I mean during a time frame long before the government intervened on anyone's behalf). They could put a stop to this - they could instigate a change in structure and practice, but they're not. WHich leads me to two conclusions:
They're all talk, or the notion that shareholders have some amount of control over a corporation is bullshit - meaning that what we think is the "free market" is nothing but smoke and mirrors - and we're all being duped.
I vote for the latter.-
GS's stock has more than doubled in the past six months, thanks to the government allowing Lehman Bros to fail and the bailout. No, if you're a stock holder, you'd think the bonuses are more than justified.
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I thought that "we all are stockholders"
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I thought with Goldman Sachs, we were just loan agents. Or did we get prefered stock?
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I lose track. If only we could locate their case worker..... X(
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So, let me just put this out there - if the stock holders are getting enough money back to think that the bonuses are well worth it, and the companies that were bailed out kept on their employees - and the CEO's got their bonuses (regardless of anyone's opinion about that)
WTF is everyone complaining about?
Maybe I've been getting the wrong impression about the opinions out there, but the general gist as I understand it is that people have been angry because the policies put forth will "rob peter to pay paul" or essentially, the wealthy will take a hit and not get what they deserve, the stockholders will take a hit and not get what they deserve.
But if I'm reading this correctly, the stockholders are happy with their returns, the CEO's are getting their money - and the millions of jobs from various industries have been saved - all because of the bailout.
Yes?
So to those complaining I say WHAT IS THE FREAKING PROBLEM?!?!?!??!?!?!
Now, that's not directed at anyone particular, but more of a very weary reaction towards a lot of the crap I've been hearing for the last few months about what a mistake it all is etc and so forth. The way I see it, is if they just did nothing, the stockholders would lose their money, the CEO's would be without jobs (and thus no bonuses) and millions of regular people would be without jobs - thus collapsing the entire economy completely and without any hope of saving any of it.
Yes?
If everyone is getting what they feel they wanted or deserved within reason, why are there any complaints at all?
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Our administration wants to destroy the rich and build the economy. They do not go hand in hand.-
If Obama wants to destroy the rich, why isn't he putting a stop to these bonuses?
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lets try to get our facts straight, jhix! o_0
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Right-wingers have their own facts.
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and fictions
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What do you call these pay Czars? Ya two doofuses. Wow sati, you need to get YOUR facts straight with you Prez Karl Marxs i mean Barrack Obama.
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have a source for that "pay czars" statement?
maybe I can extract from it what your point is... o_0 -
Wow sati, you need to get YOUR facts straight with you Prez Karl Marxs i mean Barrack Obama.
What facts did I get wrong, pray tell. -
Of course Agit8r ignores facts that they requested
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I answered in the other thread. "that's what bankruptcy judges are for"
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If the credit crunch has shown us anything it is that if a company, bank, insurer or whatever is too big for a government to allow it to fail, then it is simply too big and should be split up.
Instead of paying out big bonuses to individuals who face no risk because they can count on a bail out AIG should be dismantled into smaller companies. Then the smaller companies can take their chances on the open market.-
oooooh, sounds almost like a free market economy! (O_O)
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It's like giving bonuses to welfare recipients to retain them.
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except these mooches drive Porsches
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