They should have been fired.

quote:

WASHINGTON March 15, 2009, 05:27 pm ET · American International Group is giving executives in its most troubled business unit tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars. AIG has said it must pay out the executive bonuses to meet a contractually obligated Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments. The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company — which are part of a larger total payout reportedly valued at $450 million. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/...oryId=101916194

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Weren't these AIG guys contractually obligated to not lose a metric fucktonne of customer's money?

I think the one contractual obligation outweighs the other.

They should be happy they still have jobs.

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Paul

It's way worse than first reported...

quote:

AIG Bombshells: $1.2B in Bonuses, Over $100B Paid to Goldman, Other Banks AIG was lambasted as disclosures of its $1.2 billion bonus pool came to light. About $450 million of the bonuses were planned for employees of its financial services unit, the rogue hedge fund insider the insurer, which lost $40.5 billion later year. The Wall Street Journal reports at least seven individuals at that unit were due bonus payments of $3 million each. AIG CEO Edward Liddy says "the firm's hands are tied" because those bonus payments are "contractual commitments"; apparently, both he and regulators fear the fallout of trying to abrogate contracts, which may be legally binding but were signed before AIG became a ward of the state. Second, in part to quell the outrage over the bonus revelations - which apparently only came to light because a $165 million payment was due on Sunday - AIG released the names of its counterparties who, thus far, have received at least $90 billion of the $173 billion of government funds the firm has received in what amounts to a backdoor bailout of Wall Street firms, banks and foreign institutions. (Reports vary but Bloomberg says the counterparties got $105 billion of AIG bailout funds.) Along with Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and Citigroup, the prime beneficiaries of the AIG bailout bonanza include European banking giants Societe Generale, Deustche Bank and Barclays. But at $12.9 billion to date, Goldman Sachs is at the top of the list AIG bailout beneficiaries. This only reinforces the perception the AIG bailout was really a bailout of Hank Paulson's former firm. And, by the way, AIG's Liddy had to resign from Goldman's board in order to take the AIG job last fall. http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...,BAC,DB,BCS,XLF

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So i have been listening to shit talk about AIG from the nice people at CNBC from the second i came to work today. Then the market opens and this happens.





Go figure.

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quote:

Originally posted by Moongoose So i have been listening to shit talk about AIG from the nice people at CNBC from the second i came to work today. Then the market opens and this happens. Go figure.

I wonder who bought 10,000,000 shares of AIG. I'd like to step in their shoes for a day. They did a terrible job hiding it.

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I'm telling you - the world has gone crazy ...

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Whenever you go and buy something, you are affecting someone somewhere, be it environment, a person, or a community - you're making a statement with what you buy. So make it a smart choice ... Its a big picture

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton It's way worse than first reported...

the entire point of bailing out AIG was so that AIG would be able to compensate the counterparties so that the banks (which purchased insurance [credit default swaps] from AIG) wouldn't take a huge hit from AIG's inability to compensate them for the valid insurance contracts they purchased. Anyone who is outraged that AIG paid banks with the bailout money is misinformed about the entire purpose of the bailout. The government was far less concerned about the existence of AIG than it was about the health of the parties to which AIG potentially owed billions of dollars.


As for outrage about bonuses, oh well! It's hard to be mad at the company when its hands are contractually tied. The government could have imposed limitations on compensation, but that would have required that each contract be modified, an unlikely event considering if I were in line to receive a $3 million dollar bonus there's ZERO F'in chance I'm modifying my contract, especially when the government is coming to the rescue. People are dillusional if they think the government wasn't aware of these contracts when the bailouts occurred. The problem is that noone in their right mind would forego that much money, especially when the bailout was absolutely necessary. The bonus recipients are in an enviable position [not from a PR standpoint] because the bailout was so necessary that almost nothing could prevent it from occurring, even the egregious bonuses they are to receive for running the company, and potentially the US economy, into the ground. Bailing out AIG with bonuses in place was more important than struggling to modify those bonus packages. That's the unfortunate reality.

Last edited by jerZ07002 on Mar-16-2009 at 21:19

quote:

Originally posted by jerZ07002 As for outrage about bonuses, oh well! It's hard to be mad at the company when its hands are contractually tied. The government could have imposed limitations on compensation, but that would have required that each contract be modified, an unlikely event considering if I were in line to receive a $3 million dollar bonus there's ZERO F'in chance I'm modifying my contract, especially when the government is coming to the rescue. People are dillusional if they think the government wasn't aware of these contracts when the bailouts occurred. The problem is that noone in their right mind would forego that much money, especially when the bailout was absolutely necessary. The bonus recipients are in an enviable position [not from a PR standpoint] because the bailout was so necessary that almost nothing could prevent it from occurring, even the egregious bonuses they are to receive for running the company, and potentially the US economy, into the ground. Bailing out AIG with bonuses in place was more important than struggling to modify those bonus packages. That's the unfortunate reality.

Exactly. The outrageous outrage is so rediculous. Congress handed them that money with no strings. Why isn't Obama going batshit crazy over the $90 billion in TARP funds that went from AIG to European banks and Goldman Sachs instead of these bonuses that amount to 1/1000th of the TARP money?



God! I'm sick of this shit of forcing banks to take money, with no strings attached, then demonizing them for what they do with it. Then government plays the "white knight" card with the whole "We're coming for you... this is outrageous... we're going to go get the public's money back!" But that's what happens when you ram shit through at light speed because everything is a "crisis".

We're from the government...we're here to help.


methinks Obama and Geithner are going to find a way to make the bonuses disappear. At least they're gonna try.

quote:

Originally posted by Shakka We're from the government...we're here to help. methinks Obama and Geithner are going to find a way to make the bonuses disappear. At least they're gonna try.

right on cue----> http://www.foxnews.com/politics/200...uses-dodd-says/

quote:

Originally posted by jerZ07002 the entire point of bailing out AIG was so that AIG would be able to compensate the counterparties so that the banks (which purchased insurance [credit default swaps] from AIG) wouldn't take a huge hit from AIG's inability to compensate them for the valid insurance contracts they purchased. Anyone who is outraged that AIG paid banks with the bailout money is misinformed about the entire purpose of the bailout. The government was far less concerned about the existence of AIG than it was about the health of the parties to which AIG potentially owed billions of dollars. As for outrage about bonuses, oh well! It's hard to be mad at the company when its hands are contractually tied. The government could have imposed limitations on compensation, but that would have required that each contract be modified, an unlikely event considering if I were in line to receive a $3 million dollar bonus there's ZERO F'in chance I'm modifying my contract, especially when the government is coming to the rescue. People are dillusional if they think the government wasn't aware of these contracts when the bailouts occurred. The problem is that noone in their right mind would forego that much money, especially when the bailout was absolutely necessary. The bonus recipients are in an enviable position [not from a PR standpoint] because the bailout was so necessary that almost nothing could prevent it from occurring, even the egregious bonuses they are to receive for running the company, and potentially the US economy, into the ground. Bailing out AIG with bonuses in place was more important than struggling to modify those bonus packages. That's the unfortunate reality.

If one was surprised about who the counterparties were and roughly how much, that person obviously hasn't been paying attention enough attention to this AIG situation to comment on it. Unfortunately, that seems to be the bulk of people commenting on it.

I kind of feel bad for CEO Ed Liddy. He's going to have to go through another round as a punching bag on Wednesday, even though he's not responsible for any of this mess. But most people don't even understand that he took that role after the first AIG bailout.

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"Go back to bed america your government is in control
Here's American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it,
Watch these picturary retards bang their fuckin' skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom,
Here you go America you are free to do as we tell you
We want your soul
Your cash, your house, your phone, your cash, your house, your life" -Adam Freeland - We Want Your Soul

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss right on cue----> http://www.foxnews.com/politics/200...uses-dodd-says/

How are they going to tax them if the bonuses were earned in London? Shouldn't the UK be taxing them?

___________________
"Go back to bed america your government is in control
Here's American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it,
Watch these picturary retards bang their fuckin' skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom,
Here you go America you are free to do as we tell you
We want your soul
Your cash, your house, your phone, your cash, your house, your life" -Adam Freeland - We Want Your Soul