“... keep the most skilled executives.”

What? You think these same incompetents who got us into this mess still deserve a bonus?

I’d give them a bonus in the form of a permanent bootprint on their backsides. Who in their right mind could possibly consider these criminals as “skilled executives?”

Folktruther,

Once again you twist reality to fit your own agenda.

These bonuses, funded by taxpayer money WERE NOT PROVIDED by the Obama Administration!

The taxfunded bailout referenced here was money demanded by Paulson (Bush) and distributed by Paulson (Bush) without any guidelines or restrictions. In other words, just in case that’s to complicated for you to understand, the portion of bailout money AIG wants to use for bonuses and retention payments is bailout money given under the direction of the BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!

If you spent as much time paying attention to the news as you do looking for ways to bash Obama, you would have known about this bonus, retention plan long before NYT headlined it! And if you were on top of stuff the way you claim to be, you would have been signing petitions, writing letters and making phone calls to Congress long before Liddy’s letter, and long before NYT got their hands on Liddy’s letter.

And you would know Liddy was put at the helm of AIG to over-see and help re-organise AIG, following their stupid behavior. AND provide feed-back to the administration as problems unfolded, which is HOW OBAMA learned about this problem in the first place!

And you would know the reason this is so reprehensible is because the bonus and retention contracts Liddy’s stuck with were created long before the BUSH bailout, and were intended for that arm of AIG responsible for peddling bad CDS certificates across the globe! Which explains why TEAM OBAMA, (including Geithner) is as outraged as we the people!

And you would KNOW the Liddy letter was in RESPONSE to the OBAMA Administration DEMANDING to know how come these bonuses and retention packages were going through, when TEAM OBAMA had made it CLEAR they were UNACCEPTABLE!

And you would know that this morning Congress is expressing outrage! (Sometimes they’re as slow as you are) No doubt because they’re drowning in a flood of petitions, letters and phone calls they started getting more than a week ago, when the rest of us were paying attention.

And by the way, that’s how come AIG has finally released some facts about how they’ve used a portion of that PAULSON/BUSH bailout money. And that release has come only as a result of PRESSURE from Geithner and Team OBAMA!

FACT: Something known or proved to be true.

GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!

To put these AIG-vultures greed in perspective:

The CEO of Norways pension Fund, Yngve Slyngstad  volunteered to take a 50% reduction in salary, from $1 mill to $500 000 because of the bad result last year. (He had bought AIG/Lehman stocks.)

  And now the AIG is telling the american taxpayers that bonuses are needed to keep the very same people responsible for this crisis ?

Why ?
and why are they not put in jail ?

It looks like taxpayer bailout money is being funneled throught AIG to the banks in order to make them look like they still have their heads above water.  However, the Federal Reserve refuses to say what AIG is doing with the taxpayers’ money.

When I looked at the AIG block at the top of this article I remembered that “Lil’ Abner’s” characters called eggs “aigs”.  That seems to be the case for the members of the corporate royalty in the principality know as AIG.  In true feudalistic logic they have determined that the serfs (that’s us) must contribute more to the coffers (tax) money to support them. Machiavelli is still instructive!

How anyone in good conscience could describe the buffoons who brought us to our economic knees with such inane items as the Credit Default Swap and their derivatives as the best and brightest is beyond human ken.  The suggestion that these folk might deserve a bonus for their “good work” is a matter of “new speak” from 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World.

We are witnessing two distinct themes: 1) the belief that the working class can be depended upon to pay for everything; and 2) the class warfare as demonstrated by the contempt with which they view the “little people” who will pay for their mistakes.

Would that Obama & crew had the spine to remind the poseurs that we the U.S citizens and taxpayers now have a majority stake in their company.  It seems that government of the corporations for the corporations has not perished from the face of the earth.

Can’t Attract or RETAIN the ‘Best & Brightest’, Please is there any such thing in the entire financial Sector. Where else are these idiots going to go after working for a Corp that went belly up?!?
As for last years contractual agreement- that was when your company was a provately owned Entity- It’s now owned by US- So that agreeent is Null & Void.AIG might as well change it’s name to USAIG.
AIG’s cluster is as well foreseen and avoidable as if the FDIC had began gamlbing. Those premiums they were charging were to cover Wall streets gambling losses- no one thought if Wall Street loses We’ll too, or even more poignantly If wall Street Loses So do WE!?!
At best there must be a test to prove you are mentally deficit enough to work on wall street and as a Public servant. More likely a test to prove you are morally deficit enough to work in either of these sectors.
they Not only ran their industry in to the Ground, but the Economy- So Who’s do they think is looking to hire them anyway. Let these Top brASSfind out what it’s like to live on incomes like those they Swindled, Embezzled and extorted from. Salaries and bonus’ should be the least of their concerns-They should be volunteering to avoid Long Prison time trying to stay alive in general Pop.
As far as I’m concerned these people Knew exactly what they were doing, knew the consequences to the overall economy, but chose to continue their unethical and immoral business practice- forethought, thus malice in the High Crime of Economic Treason.I just a soon see them hang than make one more red cent from US.and considering what the other immates would have in store for them- that may be what they should be praying for.meet Bubba and all his Pals…Chooo Chooo!

Believe NYT’s “Following the AIG money” is on target.  Indeed, AIG is beginning to sound more like a gambling casino than an insurance company.

And the obvious problem with gamblers is they’re not really trustworthy and you never know how low they will go when they are desperate for money. 

At “Casino AIG,” we know their executives were told no more big time bonuses, which means they are probably desperate by now for the kind of cash they’ve become accustomed to having - really big bucks.

So the next question we must now ponder is - Would a group of executives at “Casino” AIG be dishonest enough to conspire to create fraudulent “legally binding contracts” awarding themselves million dollar bonuses?

Betting, of course, the U.S. government and taxpayers aren’t smart enough to figure it out – and we know we’re not smart because Jim Cramer said so.

Blackspeare:  You must be one of the bankers who TRIED and FAILED.  Anytime you pay a commission/bonus, whatever you want to call it,  to a banker, the bank fails!  ANYTIME!!!!  But this is good for the greedy ones on the top because the bubble gets bigger every day because of the supplied greed to the underlings.  This is what is wrong with CAPITALISM.  It always will fail.

Wait, this is the same AIG that made a bundle drug running through Mena, Arkansas and then laundered it through reinsurance scams in the Bahamas?  The one that allied with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and the Harvard Endowment to rip off the Soviet Socialist States?  That one?  And so, what, they know where the bodies are buried so the government can’t touch them?  Is that it?  “I’ll tetch ya, colonel.” - Vernon, As I Lay Dying…I think, maybe.

These guys at AIG really DON’T GET IT.  It’s time to gather much rope, begin executions, start thinning the herd of selfish pigs masquarading as finance professionals at AIG.  How many people in line for bonuses?  9,000? or so?  We may need to make more rope, but we can do that.

These bonuses are part of the bailout swindle that steals taxpayer money in plain sight and gives it to the rich.  this was precisely what was done before with previous bank bailouts.

Now this is the part that many progessives have great difficulty in understanding.

THESE BONUSES WERE FUNDED BT TAXPATER MONEY PROVIDED BT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

since large fractions of the previous bailouts were used to give money to the rich, with great population disapproval, it would be a simple matter to make restrictions on the money so it couldn’t be done again in the same way this time.

But Obama didn’t do this.  because he is beholden to the rich, not to the population.  Like Bush was.  the commenters here are blaming the people getting the money, but not Obama who is giving it to them.  With the Obamanites providing a suitble amoount of perception management that diverts attention away from the Obama administration.

Obama is continuing the bailouts of bush, the wars of bush, the class inequality of bush, the torture of bush, and the homeland despotism of bush, all under new rhetoric and political theater. 

There can be no solution until the problem is recognized; the solution to the Bushite counter revolution is not the Dems.  Obama is the problem, not the solution.  The longer people wait to see this, the deeper the pit being dug for the American people.

Blackspeare,

Oh come on now. How hard can it be to know you are creating phony derivatives? If it was too hard for the guys who did it to figure out they were doing it, then they need to find a job doing something they can figure out!

And they certainly DO NOT deserve a bonus for NOT knowing what they were doing. What kind of value is that?

It’s obvious that most posters to this article don’t know how bonuses work.  Many management positions in banking have a relatively small salary and use bonuses to compensate.  Bonuses can be based either on effort or results or both.  While a particular manager may not have met his/her goals or utterly failed, they may have tried real hard and thus get a bonus.

Excuse me!
Mr. Liddy, being committed to over-valuing SCAM credit-default swaps (CDS) to the tune of 450 TRILLION DOLLARS does not take the best and the brightest talent! It takes the WORST and the DIMMEST arss-lickers! 

As one of the tax-paying OWNERS of a major portion of AIG, I demand the “best and the brightest talent” that created this mess be FIRED Immediately! Most ESPECIALLY the TOP 50 EXECUTIVES!

We do not want to wait for eventual repayment. They owe us to much already! And I reject the notion that these alleged contracts can not be broken! ANY contract can be broken! Just ask all the folks who signed a contract for credit at a fixed rate and watched helpless while their rates went up!

The offended non-recipients of their bonuses and retention pay can take up their argument about “legally required” in court! In fact, that’s where we need to see them. I would love to hear their defense of their vile practices in open court!

“Screw the taxpayer and rationalize it with AIG gobbledygook, that’s right, now you’re sophisticated.”

Let them all fail.  If they believe that paying out these bonuses is good for business, then obviously they do not know how to run a business.  However, they do not think that it is good for business, they don’t care what is good for business.

Contractually obligated to pay 168M in bonuses to FAILED LEADERSHIP? In the words of Jon Stewart, “FUCK YOU!” They should be on trial!

To Liddy:  F*** the skilled bastards and you too.  Give them the G** D***** firing squad!  That’s what they deserve.  Since I lost my christianity, I am now a confirmed death penalty advocate for greedy people.  Or better yet, strip them “nekid” and banish them to homelessness for life.

Any executive, of any company that has failed and then been bailed out, who then has the audacity to issue itself a bonus, should face a firing squad….and not the kind where only one rifle has a live round.
And you wonder why I lack motivation?

AIG executives are a band of criminal thieves enabled by Congress and the President.  Criminality is so commonplace in Washington and Wall Street that it is now the norm.  Bailout funds are just sucker money.

Bonuses for the executives of bankrupt corporations? Bankrupt to the point that ‘we the people’ had to bail their sorry asses out? This is too freaking much! Goddamn it, enough is enough. Let AIG die! GM, Chrysler, American Airlines, Delta, and whomever else can’t compete and that would include Citibank. How are the corporate officers for these failing institutions not un-American? They sure as hell aren’t civic minded or patriotic. Criminy, regular American gots to work, pay those nasty taxes and my there are loads of those. Where are the bailouts and bonuses for regular Americans? Wait a minute, regular Americans are out of work and homes and can’t pay taxes anyway. Sort of like AIG. Yet, AIG gets American taxpayer money and passes that along to corrupt piss-ant executives? Break out one well constructed guillotine and let their precious well pampered heads roll. Seriously, why is America wasting hard earned money on vermin like these?

Let me get this straight, AIG signs “bonus” contracts that are not contingent upon profits.  Now there is a contract that I think employees all across this nation would like to see, especially since we are paying for these “bonuses.”

Maybe the financial industry should “payback” some of it’s shareholders ( the taxpayers) in the form of affordable credit ! These people are OUT OF CONTROL !
the Daily show lifted the cover off the Cauldron and let us all get a smell. It’s 90% hype and 10% market. Invest in a small business and watch REAL money Grow.