Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Twisted Tale of AIG

It's hard to find a voice arguing in favor of much to do with AIG these days. Even the most ardent supporters are hemming and hawing over the bonus scandal. The most forceful argument I've heard was some guy on talk radio whose argument was that we don't know who the bonuses are going to so can't say if they deserved those bonuses or not.

Well, it seems we actually do know who is getting bonus money at AIG. According to NY's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo noted that AIG had retention bonuses of $1 million or more (yes, that is $1 million per person) to 73 in the AIG Financial Products subsidiary. You remember that group right, these are the guys who almost wrecked the company. If that's not worth a $1 million retention bonus, what is.

And you've heard this argument, right - the mess these folks got the company into is so complicated that they are the only ones who can get us out of it. So it's worth a few dozen $1 million bonuses to hold onto those people.

Then again, of that group, 11 have taken their bonuses and cut & run. I look forward to hearing what is going on with these 11 ex AIGers. I'm sure they've taken their million dollar bonuses and left the company so they could do good in the world. We'll hear of them helping to fund fights against disease, or building houses for the poor. Wouldn't that be a nice world.

Most likely we won't even get a postcard from their new retreat on their private south pacific island.

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