House Approves Bill to Reclaim AIG Bonuses through New Tax

the new ceo hired by the government, the same government that intial approved these same bonus payments said they were retention payments which means it was for the people they wanted to keep to fix this mess......did it ever dawn on you all that these may be the folks that stoped it from completly imploding and from it being worse than it was and were going to fix it......if i were them i would give it back and resign....fix it yourself.....

No, it didn't dawn on me. I don't see why it should either.

You see, I work for a private investment firm and if we don't turn a profit, we don't get bonuses.

Crazy concept, I know.

If there are any guilty parties here thay are GONE. You are wanting to punish individuals for what OTHER individuals have done ( possible assisted by more people we want to even know about).

Guilty or not, my point is that when a company is losing money to the point of collapse, handing out bonuses to anybody doesn't make any sense. And I have a big problem with that when those bonuses are paid out with tax payer dollars. I know my company doesn't operate that way.

This troubles me.

This inappropriate use of the tax codes to punish individuals, just because we don't like that they have a contract, actually troubles me more than those creeps getting bonuses for screwing up the economy.

This troubles me.

This inappropriate use of the tax codes to punish individuals, just because we don't like that they have a contract, actually troubles me more than those creeps getting bonuses for screwing up the economy.

Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve bank of NY at that time. None of THIS bonus money was handed out under those plans. THIS one is the Dem's baby all the way. They themselves even admit that. None of them is blaming Bush. I'll at least give them credit for that. This is theirs. They own it.

Inside AIG-FP, Feeling the Public's Wrath
By Brady Dennis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 19, 2009; C01

WILTON, Conn., March 18 -- A solitary flat-screen television hangs on the back wall of the trading floor inside the headquarters of AIG Financial Products here. Wednesday afternoon, the most-talked-about employees in America huddled around it to find out just how despised they have become.

They watched quietly as members of Congress referred to them as greedy and incompetent. They heard more than one demand that their names be released to the seething American public. They heard the chairman of American International Group, Edward M. Liddy, tell lawmakers that people, in e-mails sent to AIG-FP, suggested that the firm's leaders "should be executed with piano wire around their necks."

The evening before, the firm's chief operating officer, Gerry Pasciucco -- whom Liddy recruited in November from Morgan Stanley to shut down Financial Products before it could do more harm to the economy -- had gathered them together in the same spot.

Pasciucco urged them to keep their heads down, to act professionally and to continue working to extricate Financial Products from its more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding derivative contracts. He acknowledged that the past few days have been like being "inside the piñata."

In reply, they told him that they worried mostly about getting shot, despite the guards now patrolling the parking lot, the front door and some of their homes.

A sense of fear hung in the room -- the palpable, unsettling kind that flashes across people's eyes. But there was anger, too. No one would express it publicly, of course. Who wants to hear a wealthy financier complain? And yet, within those walls off Danbury Road lies a deep sense of betrayal -- first by their former colleagues, now by their elected leaders.

The handful of souls who championed the firm's now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president.

"They've chosen to throw us under the bus," said a Financial Products executive, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. "They have vilified us."

They say what is missing from this week's hysteria is perspective. The very handsome retention payments they received over the past week were set in motion early last year when the firm's former president, Joe Cassano, was on his way out the door. Financial Products was already running into trouble on its risky credit bets, and the year ahead looked grim. People were weighing offers from other firms, and AIG executives feared that too many departures could lead to disaster....


....The Financial Products staff met twice Wednesday inside one of the firm's large, glass-walled conference rooms to discuss the boss's letter. Numerous employees indicated that they would be willing to return the money, but most wanted nothing more to do with the firm. It was a preview of the possible exodus to come, one that concerns Liddy himself.

"My fear is that the damage is done," he told a congressional subcommittee. "That they will return [the money], but that they will return it with their resignations."

There is little doubt within Financial Products that he's right about that.

"Nobody is going to give it back and then stay," said one of the firm's employees. "If they give back the money, then they will walk. And they will walk into the arms of AIG's counterparties."

In the meantime, the e-mails from the public have continued to roll in, including death threats and calls to blow up the firm's Wilton headquarters. Reporters and photographers have camped out in front of the offices in London and Connecticut. They have staked out employees' houses. The New York Post identified one executive and labeled him "Jackpot Jimmy." Another employee had to relocate his family after a London tabloid printed his address. A protest group is organizing an "AIG magical mystery tour" Saturday, loading up a 47-seat bus to stop at Financial Products and at the homes of some of its executives.

I feel the same. This sets a dangerous precedent for future abuses of power by the government.