Barry Artiste Op.Ed
With Americans struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over their head, isn’t it nice AIG is handing out bonuses to the tune of $165 million dollars of taxpayers money in the form of performance Bonuses to needy Executives. One would think after driving AIG into the ground these Bonuses can only mean one thing. If millions are paid for incompetence, imagine the bonueses they hand out for actually doing any work to make IAG a profit. Nice Scam!
One wonders what Rock God President Obama is going to do in all this? Nothing, or perhaps a Finger Wag and say dont do this again! Course when Obama reiterated those immortal words “I have a Dream” AIG and other Corporates must have though a Messiah had arrived, while the citizens of the US of A may feel their Butt Cheeks clench a little tighter at being screwed by one of their own.
But then you voted for him!
WASHINGTON — American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170-billion (U.S.).
AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments.
The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7-billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.
The large bulk of the payments at issue cover the AIG Financial Products Unit. This was the unit that sold credit default swaps, the risky contracts that caused massive losses for the insurer and brought the company close to collapse last year.
A white paper prepared by the company says that AIG is contractually obligated to pay a total of about $165-million of previously awarded “retention pay” to employees in this unit by Sunday, March 15. The document says that another $55-million in retention pay has already been distributed to about 400 AIG Finance Products employees.
Source: ctv2.theglobeandmail.com
Tags: Washington | US Economy | The United States of America | Tech & Biz | Bailouts | * President Barack Obama | American Insurance Group