Dear A.I.G., I Quit!

So the question is not whether he was working in the specific department that messed up. The entire company has failed. He is lucky, courtesy of the taxpayers, that he even had a job to quit. Throw them all out on the street and give the money to the auto companies - after you clean out their executive suites. Surely we can find better people to run these companies.

And then pass some laws and regulations to change the incentive balance. You will NEVER get rid of greed. It is a basic component of human nature, necessary for evolutionary survival. Some will respond to this instinct ethically, some will not. But armed with this knowledge, let's just tweak the free market rules and channel this greed, making the incentives align with the common sense best interests of the country.

When the best and brightest graduating from MIT decide to go to Wall St and invent stuff that even Alan Greenspan doesn't understand, something is seriously out of whack.

Since you will NEVER get rid of greed, (sorry to all the utopians out there) let's harness for the common good.

Another thing - should we allow companies to get "too big to fail ?" As we now see, we need to seriously contradict free market principles to save the free market !

Warren Buffett for Sec of Treasury !!!

i hope desantis is suitably embarrassed - $700,000+ bonus, million dollar salary = greed greed greed greed greed.

Dear AIG, may I please have a job?

wow! this was actually somewhat heartfelt. I guess AIG and Liddy are torn as to who to appeal to...the public or their employees.

It's interesting that the people of AIG have to repay their bonuses--I think that some of these bonuses should be repaid since they were a little too extravagant but some of these "hard working" employees should see some money.

We as the public do not know how hard the people of AIG have been working to keep the company afloat and I understand that its hard to see people profiting more than you are, but understand their position in the company and what they do. Auto workers might lose jobs because they're not as valued within the American society as much as bankers in New York...as much as I hate to say this, but it's the order of the capitalist society and since everyone's against the socialist government, there's nothing that can be done to change the system.

So what....just another guy screwed by AIG and the rest of the American banking system. We could fill this forum with letters from people screwed by these guys. People like factory workers, miners, truckers, and construction workers have all been screwed by their actions. It wasn't any of their faults either but I don't see AIG sending them a "bonus" from the tax payers bailout money.
If this guy actually signed on for one dollar and passed up other more stable job opportunities to stay with AIG, I guess he can take the same lesson that a lot of other Americans have had. You cannot trust these pricks.

Very nicely written letter !
Gives me the flip side of story which i was dying to read

its true though im in tv production
we just went over this

all the news does is give bias information
which is controlled on whether the owner
is democrat or republican
i always wished that there would be a news station that wasn't bias

Personally, I think the bonuses at AIG were well deserved. Just kidding.

What a sad state of affairs it is when even some comments on current.com adhere to “Group Thinking”. It is good to here another side of any story other that the mass media’s spin.

“Hey everyone, lets take this small fact of retention payments (wait, lets call them bonuses) and spin it in to such a distraction, the congressmen will have to get onboard of this unjustified witch-hunt to keep their votes coming from these idiots we control. We don’t even have to tell the other side of the story! Nobody will care about the whole story, just what parts we tell.”

Stupid Lemmings

The whole bonuses "fiasco" is a red herring. While this man will suffer no loss to his current standard of living, the precedent set here is enormously frightening. I think the execs who were responsible belong in jail. Not being persecuted in the media for receiving bonuses.

This man however had a contract for $1, the rest of his "pay" would be performance based. This is what his "bonus" was. The point is, do you think it is fair that a person worked for a company's department that contributed to miliions of dollars in profit deserves only $1 in compensation?

Also, the idea that after the Senate AND the House INSISTED that the bonus payments be made, they now attempt to pass an ex post facto tax to recoup those payments is a DANGEROUS scenario to say the least. Public sentiment is what caused these people to pay back their bonuses. (Which is a misnomer in many cases as their bonuses were in fact a de facto salary based on merit.) The house bill H.R. 1586 would not have stood a Constitutional check. Anyone who thinks it would has not read the Constitution or does not believe in the principles (not the text) of the Ex Post Facto law.

So AIG is failing, wheres the systemic meltdown?

you know what this is?
( rubs finger and thumb together )

this is the worlds tiniest violin playing my heart pumps purple piss for you, Mr. DeSantis.

amen, neocongo.

Wah wah. An executive vice president is completely unaware and therefore not complicit with AIG's nuclear meltdown? I don't believe it for a second.

Actually there is more to this story that the media is not covering. The total amount of bonuses paid was 218 million which is significantly higher. More importantly these bonuses were going to the people who were responsible for the mess the company finds itself in. Without the bailout funds the company would be bankrupt and those bonuses would not have been paid out anyways. Most of these bonuses were paid to executives working outside of the U.S. using our U.S. tax dollars. On top of all this don't forget the parties and events the company was hosting when the bailout was first announced. Having a fourth quarter loss that totals over 60 billion and spending the money this way isn't a very good indicator that the bailout money was spent well and raises questions as to whether or not this company can change the way it does business to stay afloat. This is a very big deal and I dont care about the executives side of the story. Bottom line is you do not deserve bonuses when you ran your company into the ground. You deserve to be fired. AIG first defended their bonuses by saying they need to give a competitive salary to keep quality employees. Which makes no sense at all. Then they claimed that they were bound by contracts to pay out bonuses. Which isnt necessarily true either. Contracts can be renegotiated a practice which happens quite regularly in corporate settings. Also the person who was overseeing the bailout money knew about these bonuses shortly before they were paid out but thought that fighting the bonuses payout could result in a lawsuit which turns out wasnt true if he would have consulted someone with a little more expertise on law. The way big business is being handled is out of control and outrage is the right feeling to have right now. If it is misdirected in some ways thats unfortunate, but join the club. You have hardly felt the the true effects of what the economic downturn has caused. Cut your losses and get out before things get worse Jake. I hope he actually donates the money for a good cause and not to some bs charity to get tax breaks. I am interested in where his money is going.

So I'm supposed to feel sorry for this guy because the failing company he works for didn't give him his bonus/took it back? Newsflash fucktard... you aren't the only one getting fucked because of your companies decisions (and other companies just like yours). Stop acting like a fucking victim because we all are!

I work for a very large company at this time and guess what? Supervisors and above took a 5% paycut and we all lost our 1/2 401k matching among other things...

In summary fuck you Jake Desantis!

It's not blabbering. It's the other side of the story that deserves to be heard. All of his points are good ones, and I would probably have taken a similar course of action had it been me.

To say that it was his responsibility to prevent this is kind of absurd, given his department's focus on business development and not credit default swaps. He even goes on to talk about the life savings he lost because of those dealings.

Can you say you lost something similar? Probably not. You might think to read the story next time so you don't look like such a dumb ass.

Half way through his blabbering i stopped reading and asked myself a couple of things.

1. did he do anything to prevent this?
2. do i care?

Did I ever say just how much I hate the American media? Its amazing how news organizations look to find a source evil in every story that they publish rather than just to state the facts. This goes right down to misrepresenting the facts like comparing the bonuses to the bailout by writing it in the following way

170 Billion in bailouts
165 Million in bonuses

Intended to confuse the audience and make sure that everyone would think that their tax money was used mostly on the bonuses which simply isn't true. Now you have reporters camping outside of everyday employee's homes, looking to make them the villains, letting them get death threats and attacks, and having our representatives try to play superman by taxing and attacking every worker of AIG, making it seem that they all live in giant mansions whipping their ass with 20 dollar bills.