In This Economy?

NOTE: This will be my final AIG piece for a while. As you read, you’ll see why.

Say hello to the angry mob…

It has been exhaustively reported (both on this blog and elsewhere) that AIG recently gave some of their executives $165 million in bonuses despite their historically massive Q4 losses and the $180ish billion in government bailout money they have received.

AIG has come under intense scrutiny and the people who received the bonuses have been tried and convicted by the angry mob of public opinion (of which I am a pitchfork wielder/alternate torch bearer).

In the aftermath of this backlash, three very different sides have emerged amongst the AIG bonus recipients. These sides are as follows:

SIDE #1: “here, take the money, just don’t hurt me”

A large number of executives agreed within days to return all or some of the money they were given as a bonus. In total, about $50 million of the nearly $220 million (oh yeah, BTW, that $165 million turned out to be an incorrect amount…it was actually $218 million) has been returned.

I’m sure the people who returned the money did it more because they were scared shitless that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was going to give their names to the media and less because they felt like they needed to.

And you know, the more and more entangled I get in this AIG web, the more and more I start to see their side and how horribly shitty it all is. Here you are, working for AIG, you think you’ve got some money coming and then days after you get said money you are asked to give it back. And worse, if you don’t give it back your name is going to be thrown out there like a scrap of meat to a pack of wild dogs.

Shit.

I’m getting conflicted. Yikes. Let’s move on to some dudes that are definitely douchbags. Maybe that’ll straighten me out.

SIDE #2: “fuck you, this is blackmail”

AIG Financial Products unit head Gerald Pasciucco told a staff meeting for UK and Paris employees on Monday that he thought the demand for bonus repayments was blackmail.

He supposedly told the staff members to strongly consider giving their money back but told them that ultimately, it was a personal choice.

And you know, he’s right. It is a personal choice. If I were paid a million dollars that I was owed and I didn’t have anything to do with the direct collapse of the economy (as so many of these bonus recipients didn’t), I would definitely not be cool with just handing that money back over.

Shit.

There I am again. Conflicted. There’s one more side to this thing. Maybe that’ll clear everything up.

SIDE #3: “i’m done with AIG”

One man has caught a lot of media attention recently for the unorthodox way he decided to return his bonus money into the economy.

Of course I am speaking about Jake DeSantis, the former executive vice president in the AIG financial products division. He both resigned from his AIG position AND pledged his entire bonus to charity in an op-ed peice for the New York Times. In the piece, which was crafted as a resignation letter from Mr. DeSantis to AIG CEO Edward Liddy, he laid out his reasons for leaving in a clear and eloquent way.

The letter was strong.You can read it all HERE.

Honestly, I think I might actually like this Jake DeSantis guy.

Which makes me even more conflicted. And it is that growing feeling of uncertainty about the entire situation that is making me retire from the AIG bonus witch hunt society for good. It is with a heavy heart that I leave this political distraction behind, but I just won’t feel right damning these men one day and doubting my damnation of them the next. So with that, I am turning in my pitchfork and my torch and I am leaving to write about other more black and white topics.

Topics like THIS.

Tags: AIG, Andrew Cuomo, bailout, Edward Liddy, Jake DeSantis, resignation

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 3:01 PM and is filed under Bad News, Good News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.