AIG Bonuses?
The prospect of paying multi-million dollar bonuses to the very executives at AIG who were lynch pins in the collapse of the economy is outrageous. Everyone from the President on down to the man on the street seems to agree -with a few exceptions. A New York Times writer yesterday argued that contracts need to be honored and that these bright executives need to be kept around because only they can straighten out the mess and we don't want them to be hired away. Over 400 comments in response were posted by this morning, apparently overwhelmingly outraged.
These bonuses may be a drop in the bucket compared to the sea of economic problems overwhelming the economy, but the principle of who deserves the be rewarded goes to the heart of the American dream and paying bonuses to AIG people seems more like a nightmare.
There are thousands of litigating attorneys in America who would love to show how these contracts can be avoided by hardball tactics. Refuse to pay and force the executives to sue, then counter sue for fraud and damages and bring third parties in, like the board of directors and those who advised AIG on contract matters, such as law firms and consultants, to be on the hook for their negligence and incompetence in allowing these contracts to be approved.
Why should these despicable executives have sacred contracts when unionized autoworkers apparently don't? What kind of a company would be interested in hiring these scoundrels away from AIG? Such a company would be asking to become the next AIG.
Getting these jerks to help untangle their mess with the giant carrot of bonuses is a terrible precedent. Better to use the stick of hardball civil litigation and possible criminal prosecution.
The Bankruptcy Court process has a long track record of accomplishment, which perhaps should have been called upon in the case of AIG. Bonus claims against a bankrupt company would be about as worthless as these executives who are claiming them.
posted by Tom Blake | 8:46 AM
2 Comments:
Well said, I think public sentiment would support paying three times the bonuses to go after them along the lines you suggest even if the only result was their further humiliation.
We are seeing one more example of the downside of democracy. Stalin would have known what to do with these guys and we'd never know about it. So if this outrage is not resolved to the American peoples' satisfaction, we'll just have to console ourselves that our system of government is the best so far devised, but it has big weaknesses.
Another thought. The rise in deregulation occurred simultaneously with the rise in power of the religioius right. The religious right has been preoccupied by abortion, homosexuality, immigration, and restictions on forcing their version of the Christian religion on the country as a whole. They seem oblivious to the immorality of bilking people, rich and middle class, of their fortunes or of wrecking the global economy.
John from Phoenix.
The religious right has a lot in common with these corporate scam artists. Despite all the admonitions from Jesus about the evils of glorifying money, those who lead the religious right sanctify its pursuit. The ideologies both groups spout are perversions and the methods they both embrace are fraudulent. The majority of Americans now see that both are charlatans.
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