Word on the street is that some of the bonus recipients at AIG’s Financial Products group have decided to give back some or all of the cash—to the tune of $50M.
Nowhere close to the $165M they received, but, like the 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, I guess it’s a start.
But I’m betting it wasn’t the masters of the universe doing a Spike Lee. It must have had something to do with the bus tour of AIG executives’ homes in Connecticut by activists over the weekend. That's got to give them & their neighbors the jim-jams.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner & Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke are also proposing that the government take a much firmer hand in taking over & winding down non-bank financial institutions that get themselves into AIG-like economic trouble.
For those of you out there shuddering at the thought of Big Brother telling you what you’re going to do with the money you cadge out of the taxpaying public: thank your buddies at AIG, who demonstrated beyond a shred of doubt that the industry can’t organize its way out of a fiscal paper bag.
You know it’s bad when you're willing to take the chance that a federal bureaucracy can do a better job than business itself.
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