The question is, what are people going to do about it? As long as companies are being bailed out at our expense (your money is paying for some fat cat's yacht, his trip to Tahiti, his kids braces, his leather breathcase, his business class ticket to Rome for the weekend) with zero accountability, they're going to abuse this bailout money. Here's a tip - bailout does not equal a handout.
While I have been disappointed in President Obama's first few days in office, I do commend him on taking a stand here.
"It's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay," Obama said at the outset of an appearance to announce help for small businesses hurt by the deep recession.
"How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat," the president said.
Watch Obama speak here.
..."these bonuses are going to people who screwed this thing up enormously."
"Maybe it's time to fire some people," he said. "We can't keep them from getting bonuses but we can keep them from having their jobs. ... In high school, they wouldn't have gotten retention (bonuses), they would have gotten detention."
AIG has agreed to Obama administration requests to restrain future payments. Geithner had pressed the president's case with AIG's chairman, Edward Liddy, last week.
"He stepped in and berated them, got them to reduce the bonuses following every legal means he has to do this," said Austan Goolsbee, staff director of President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
While Obama has taken a step in the right direction, reducing bonuses isn't nearly good enough. Not only should there be ZERO bonuses for AIG, but for finance companies in general that have required financial assistance (yeah, like banks).
The reality is these people, if they could afford it, should be paying PENALTIES.
I predict that if this circus of conceit continues, ordinary people are going to start staking out the offices of corporates like AIG and begin to stalk and harass the clowns who 'work' there.
