CrackedWorld

The top lawmakers in Washington are furious with Insurance Giant AIG after hearing the news that they intend to pay out bonuses to it’s top executives that total $170 million. The troubled company has received over $165 billion in bailout funds since congress chose to take action last fall.

I realize that the federal government can not tell any corporation how much to pay it’s workers on any level, but once they accept federal tax dollars to stay afloat all bets should be off. This is absurd!

I am sure that in the next few days we will hear things like $170 million is a small fraction of the $165 billion the government gave them; or their salaries are actually very small and they depend on these bonuses for the bulk of their income. In fact we’re already hearing that they already had bonuses in contracts for these executives and they can’t get out of the contracts.

Foxnews is reporting just that:

A white paper prepared by the company says that AIG is contractually obligated to pay a total of about $165 million of previously awarded “retention pay” to employees in this unit by Sunday, March 15. The document says that another $55 million in retention pay has already been distributed to about 400 AIG Financial Products employees.

The company says in the paper it will work to reduce the amounts paid for 2009 and believes it can trim those payments by at least 30 percent. AIG also pledged to Geithner that it would restructure $9.6 million in bonuses scheduled to go a group that covers the top 50 executives. Liddy and six other executives have agreed to forgo bonuses. The group of top executives getting bonuses will receive half of the $9.6 million now, with the average payment around $112,000.

AIG would have no problems reducing future compensations to these people if they simply fired them. Lets face it AIG lost $62 billion in the final quarter of 2008 alone, would you still have a job if you produced the worst performance record in history? I know I wouldn’t and that’s exactly what this is; the worse loss in History.

“I call upon the executives at AIG to right the wrong they have done to American taxpayers, who are footing the bill for the most expensive government rescue in history. They should renounce the bonuses and refuse the excessive retention pay they previously agreed to,” Pelosi said.

How do these people sleep at night knowing what they have single handedly done to the economy? This is pretty much what started the downfall isn’t it?

We are all watching our retirement funds get smaller and smaller while these greedy Insurance guys run to the bank with their bonuses. The way I see it we own that company now and I want these people to hit the bricks, clean out their desks and get out!

AIG Chairman Edward Liddy sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who Blasted AIG on Foxnews Sunday.

CNN explained the letter in a nutshell:

In the letter to Geithner, Liddy said the unit’s 25 highest-paid contract employees will reduce their salaries to $1 this year and all other officers in the unit will reduce their salaries by 10 percent. Other “non-cash compensation” will be reduced or eliminated. But he told Geithner that some bonus payments are binding legal obligations of the company, and “there are serious legal, as well as business consequences for not paying.”

Accepting tax payers money from the United States Government isn’t binding enough? Oh wait I forgot us tax payers aren’t important enough to worry about are we.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put pen to paper calling the bonuses “unconscionable”  the statement read: “I call upon the executives at AIG to right the wrong they have done to American taxpayers, who are footing the bill for the most expensive government rescue in history. They should renounce the bonuses and refuse the excessive retention pay they previously agreed to.”

Its a Cracked World when I agree with Nancy Pelosi. Please Help Me!

Tags: Bailout, Politics