Wed 25 Mar 2009
My rage from the AIG pompousness has boiled away enough to type. Congress, however, still has me all a temper.
Yes there were some tough questions and accusations thrown at AIG but they were all formulated for the best play during their next campaign, not getting to the bottom of the debacle.
First of all, I want to know what we need to do to start getting rid of these guys. The severance question is still an unknown. I am pretty sure all these guys have massive golden parachutes that are outlined in bullet-proof executive compensation contracts. I am also pretty sure these severance packages will all run into the millions… just like the bonuses.
I bet the Republicans are glad the AIG meme is moving off the table this week, this will allow them to get back to their tax cut theology.
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March 25th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I dunno…
I find it hard to blame Liddy for the mess that AIG caused last week. I mean, he was hired on to try and fix that mess and from what I understand, he had little to do with that fiasco.
However, I do feel that Congress IS very much at fault, as this “retention incentive” BS was left in purposefully by members of congress who drafted the bill and looked it over before passing it.
Those bonuses could have been removed months ago by congress and they weren’t…and what pisses me off is the people that seem to be the most pissed off about this are those that kept the verbage in place to start with.
March 25th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Congress looking into this months ago, but came to the conclusion that they couldn’t legally alter the bonus clauses of the employment contracts. At least not without a lengthy court battle, ending up costing more than the bonuses with no appreciable gain for the effort.
Even the “tax the bonuses” bill is on pretty shaky legal grounds.
I agree though, biting the bullet and firing these guys would probably, in the end, cost the same as paying out the bonuses.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Seems to me that including a requirement that bonuses not be paid as a condition of getting the bailout money would’ve been straight-up, business-as-usual, completely legal Federal blackmail; whereas this attempt to fix it after the fact with a special tax smacks of ‘bill of attainder’. The only drawback I can see to doing it the blackmail way (“we can’t legally change those contracts but we can withhold this money until you ‘voluntarily’ change them, just like we did with the national speed limit by making highway funds contingent on states ‘voluntarily’ adopting the double-nickel”) would be if a “too big to fail” company called the Fed’s bluff and said, “no thank you, we’ll just bankrupt ourselves and trash the economy more because our execs aren’t willing to give up their bonuses.” Alas, it’s too late now.
I don’t like the bonus business, but I was pretty pissed at Bush for ignoring the Constitution and I’d rather not see this Congress and Obama continue to ignore it, and the bill-of-attainder problem looks significant … so methinks Congress should drop the fight over bonuses and pass a resolution-with-no-teeth (like ones declaring “National Barbershop Quartet Day” or “National Fart-Jokes Day”) declaring the execs who got bonuses Official National Poopyheads as a symbolic act, then move on to stuff they can actually do something about legally.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Check out this cartoon about AIG!
http://pastexpiry.blogspot.com/2009/03/cartoon-aig-adventures-in-greed.html
*CARTOON*