Washington Post:
Rage at AIG Swells As Bonuses Go Out
Fed Decided Payouts Couldn't Be Stopped
By Brady Dennis and David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 17, 2009;
A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.
It's a mob effect," one senior executive said. "It's putting people's lives in danger."
Politicians and the public spent yesterday demanding that AIG rescind payouts that they said rewarded recklessness and greed at a company being bailed out with $170 billion in taxpayer funds. But company officials contend that the uproar is scaring away the very employees who understand AIG Financial Products' complex trades and who are trying to dismantle the division before it further endangers the world's economy.
"It's going to blow up," said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly."
President Obama yesterday vowed to "pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses." But that pledge might have come too late. About $165 million in retention payments started to go out Friday to employees at Financial Products, after numerous discussions with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.
Attorneys working for the Fed had been examining the matter for months and determined that the retention payments couldn't be touched because AIG would face costly lawsuits and be subject to penalties from states and foreign governments. Administration officials said over the weekend that they agreed with that assessment.
the rest here
3 comments:
How about our government 'servants' give up their pay increases as well as their $93,000 INCREASE for expenses...
C-CS
It's on the govt.
Bush and Obama.
They were in charge and in a rush and clearly nobody anywhere did their homework, but instead FUCKED US so AIG could honor their commitments to pay off their policies in the Caymans, Switzer., Dubai, France and here to big time investment houses whose ownership is protected from our righteous wrath.
This is on the govt, NOT AIG.
There's greed and then there's stupidity and both admins are totally guilty
There's greed and then there's stupidity and both admins are totally guilty . . .and yet it's generations of lowly American taxpayers that will cover ALL their asses today - regardless of continent on which reside or hide assets.
Post a Comment