Reid Blasts Taxpayer-Funded AIG Bonuses
Not that it should come as that much of a surprise given what corporate America has established as routine behavior in the 21st century, but Harry Reid has struck out a planned bonuses to AIG executives and management in the wake of a federal bailout for the company:
"As ordinary families struggle to make ends meet in this dramatic economic crisis, AIG's management nevertheless asks that taxpayer dollars subsidize the firm's employee-retention plan," Reid stated. "The $500 million plan would benefit the very AIG executives who led the firm to the brink of collapse. To reward executives with exorbitant paydays after poor performance, and to do so even indirectly with taxpayer dollars, strikes most Americans as fundamentally unfair and a misuse of their money."
The Washington Post had reported that AIG plans to dole out over $500 million to its top employees to keep them at the company. No word on why anyone would want to keep these losers.
So, if you are a complete fuck-up and run a company into the ground to the point of needing federal money to dig yourself out, you get a bonus? Where do I fill out an application?
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Maybe you've seen this already, but this is an interesting little sidebar to what's happened, and (maybe to put too fine a point on it) something of an indictment of our power structure in this country.
Here's a quote; full link below:
"The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he wrote. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government," he said.
"All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."
Lahde became one of the biggest names in the investment industry when one of his funds produced a return of 866% last year, largely by forecasting the US home loans industry would collapse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/18/banking-useconomy
Posted by: barabajagal | November 14, 2008 2:28 PM