BLOGS BY BOB

According to the New York Times the American International Group (A.I.G.) will pay or has paid more than $165 million in bonuses to the very executives that nearly caused the company to collapse.  The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html?em) this from a company that has borrowed $170 billion in U.S. Taxpayer dollars and is now 80% owned by the U.S. Government. 

While U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have strenuously objected to the plans, the company says the bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.   A.I.G. argues that the bonuses were promised last year before the crisis and cannot be legally cancelled.

What’s wrong with this picture?  I was in the work force for over fifty years when I retired and was never promised a bonus regardless of performance.  Frankly, I performed very well in every job I ever had and most often got no bonus at all.  My reward was to keep my job.   How is it that people get promises of rewards before they do anything?   It’s no wonder that the great middle class thinks our justice system is totally biased toward the rich. 

Here’s what really grates on me, though.  The CEO of A.I.G. Edward M. Liddy says, “We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses without these bonuses.”  What?  If these people who; ran the company into the ground, caused thousands of people to lose everything they have, precipitated a huge market crash and cost the U.S. taxpayer billions of dollars,  If these are the best and brightest I’d like to know by what measure.  By my standards they are the dumbest, densest, most dishonest and dreariest.  These people should be fired and perhaps imprisoned but they certainly should not be rewarded.

If we are to adopt A.I.G. standards then perhaps Bernie Madoff should get a reward for doing such a great job of fleecing thousands of people out of $65 billion.  Maybe Enron executives who engineered that debacle should be given bonuses and expense paid vacations on the French Riviera and — let’s drain the treasury to pay those responsible for the Exxon Valdez incident for the wonderful work they did in destroying the Alaskan environment.

I have been and am a supporter of the Obama administration’s efforts to pull us out of the financial quagmire that the Bush administration got us into.  But, my patience is limited.  Are we to say, “Oh, sorry we didn’t know you were contractually obligated to pay bonuses…so we’ll find a way to give you even more money?” Put the brakes on Mr. Obama, or the American public will turn on you faster than a duck sliding through Valdez oil. 

If nothing else, the Obama administration should make sure that every bonus penny gets paid back to the taxpayer with interest and they should insist that every A.I.G. executive who was in any way responsible for he corporate collapse be fired.   Being as we own 80% of A.I.G. it would seem that we should have some leverage in the way the company is run.  To quote Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, “We need to crush those people….crush them.”   

Please comment here or by email bob@baronson.org.  Also, please read and comment on my Organ Donation and Transplantation blogs on http://bobsnewheart.wordpress.com .   You can visit my Facebook site, Organ Transplant Patients, Family and Friends at http://tinyurl.com/225cfh  OR — my Facebook home page http://www.facebook.com/home.php