WWTBAM Bored

Just got the breaking news alert: AIG Bonuses Closer to $450 Million

According to the co-chairs of the CT banking committee, it's closer to $450 million than the $185 or $232 million figures tossed around last week.

(Sorry, no link, I read it on my blackberry and was too lazy to go to the site, but the alert was from NBC 30.)

Something must be done about this, we can't have competent people still working for AIG now that the government owns it, let get the Postmaster General on the job.

Here's the link:

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/loca ... llion.html

The discrepancy lies in similar payments that could be made in 2010, to the tune of $230 million or so.

It's a good thing for them they didn't actually make any money or those bonuses would have been so big they couldn't ever have afforded to pay them.

From what I understand about this whole AIG mess is that there was only one division, that dealt in what they call "derivatives" (and I'm not sure what those are), that really caused AIG to go to the verge of collapse. There were many other divisions of the company that were highly profitable but the losses incurred by that one division eclipsed the profits produced by the other divisions. And, many of the bonuses involved in this mess were going to people that were not part of that division. So those people had nothing to do with the problems AIG had. Yet, some of these people and their families are being harassed and threatened.

What's really criminal to me here is that both Obama and Geithner knew all about the protection put in the stimulus bill regarding those bonuses and continued to lie about knowing anything about them.

What's also curious about this mess is that one Senator Christopher Dodd's (boy, he is all over the place isn't he?) wife just so happens to work (or worked) for the AIG branch in Bermuda. Bermuda?

And there's some connection between Rep. Maxine Waters and AIG or her husband.

This story gets curioser and curioser.

Populist rage is such an easy thing to manipulate.

Sir_Galahad wrote:From what I understand about this whole AIG mess is that there was only one division, that dealt in what they call "derivatives" (and I'm not sure what those are), that really caused AIG to go to the verge of collapse. There were many other divisions of the company that were highly profitable but the losses incurred by that one division eclipsed the profits produced by the other divisions. And, many of the bonuses involved in this mess were going to people that were not part of that division. So those people had nothing to do with the problems AIG had. Yet, some of these people and their families are being harassed and threatened.

I guess no one has ever been laid off from a division that's been making money.

The fact is that these people weren't doing their jobs unless by doing their jobs you mean adopting the Segeant Schultz ("I see nothing") appraoch to business. They failed to exercise corporate oversight. They certainly shared in the profits those others brought in, if not directly, certainly indirectly by AIG's enhanced image and inflated stock price due to the paper profits that were rolling in.

Plus, at a lot of companies (obviously I don't know if that applies at AIG), other divisions are adapting the same risky practices with lack of proper ovesight that brought AIG down, it's just that the right (or wrong) set of circumstances hasn't arisen yet that collapses the whole house of cards. Corporate culture tends to be perasive. At well run companies, maverick departments or divisions aren't allowed to go off on their own when the potential results are as catastrophic as this. If they can't get company management to reign in the other division's practices, at the very least, they cover their own rear ends with plenty of paper warning about what could potentially happen. At Enron there were a few whistle blowers. From AIG, not a peep.