Wednesday, March 18, 2009

More on AIG...

AIG's CEO Edward M. Liddy has told congress today that he asked executives at AIG to "do the right thing" and return at least half of the $165,000,000. According to Liddy, some of the employees have already agreed to return all of their bonus.

**also,
Apparently seven executive members of AIG's Financial Products Unit had recieved over 4 million dollars each in bonus-money. Ironically, it's this same Financial Products Unit that is blamed for putting AIG into the "financial turmoil" that eventually forced the government to bailout the company with 170 billion dollars...
***



"Specifically I've asked those who received retention payments in excess of $100,000 or more to return at least half of those payments, some have already stepped forward and offered to give up 100 percent of their payments." -Liddy.

The CEO also said that he was reluctant to reveal the names of those who agreed to return their bonuses and those who refused because the public has been so angry that AIG employees have received death threats.

4 comments:

Anastasia Markovtsova said...

Maybe it's because I don't know much about the topic, but why is it so important to know which people got the bonuses? Sure, it's not fair that $165 million was just handed over to people who really don't deserve/need it, but who are we to judge? America is not always a fair country - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So if someone ends up with a couple hundred thousand dollars, then they just end up with it. And the fact that some of employees who received bonuses are now getting death threats is just ridiculous. Why are people taking it so far?

Jeff Yeh said...

personally i don't think it's that important to know who got what, but i guess people just want to blame other people to sort of channel their stress/sorrows/anger... :(

G C said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
G C said...

What the american people have been doing with the matter of AIG is a bit idiotic. The 161 million that the AIG executives took was only .1% of the government bailout. And sure, the american people are simply pushing bad feelings and blame for the current state of the economy on these executives. But the thing is, this is good because it will help discourage bigger executive bonuses, because in a way, AIG has become an embodiment of the "big corporation" in Americans' minds, which is why the blame that is being directed at AIG is also what the current american ideology is.