165 million dollars...

Well, AIG is a front set-up to pump money indirectly to Goldman Sachs and the like. So it is natural that their execs should get some money for this service provided.

Now that Goldman Sachs gets enough money and want to repay us back with our money, I predict AIG will soon be history.

 

A breakdown for the 170B

$12.9B Goldman Sachs (2.5/5.6/4.8)
$5.2B Bank of America (0.2/0.5/4.5)
$6.8B Merrill Lynch (6.8/1.8/3.1)
$11.9B Societe Generale (4.1/6.9/0.9)
$11.8B Deutsche Bank (2.6/2.8/6.4)
$8.5B Barclays (0.9/0.6/7.0)
$5.0B UBS (0.8/2.5/1.7)
$4.9B BNP Paribas (0.0/0.0/4.9)
$3.5B HSBC Bank (0.2/0.0/3.3)
$3.3B Calyon (1.1/1.2/0.0)
$2.3B Citigroup (0.0/0.0/2.3)
$2.2B Dresdner Kleinwort (0.0/0.0/2.2)
$1.6B JPMorgan/Morgman Stanley (0.6/0.0/1.0)
$0.4B JPMorgan (0.4/0.0/0.0)
$1.2B Morgan Stanley (0.2/0.0/1.0)
$1.5B Wachovia (0.7/0.8/0.0)
$1.5B ING (0.0/0.0/1.5)
$1.1B Bank of Montreal (0.2/0.9/0.0)
$1.0B Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank (0.0/1.0/0.0)
$0.8B Rabobank (0.5/0.3/0.0)
$0.7B Royal Bank of Scotland (0.2/0.5/0.0)
$0.7B DZ Bank (0.7/0.0/0.0)
$0.5B KFW (0.5/0.0/0.)
$0.3B Banco Santander
$0.4B Dresdner Bank AG (0.0/0.4/0.0)
$0.4B Credit Suisse (0.0/0.0/0.4)
$0.2B Citidel (0.0/0.0/0.2)

$38.8B US Banks
$50.2B Foreign Banks
$12.0B Municipal Bonds
$84.0B Unaccounted for

 

If I understand correctly, these bonuses are for the sales people who HIT their targets.

They shouldn't blame for those who screwed up the company. They did their job. They had a contract stating if they sold x or y - they get a bonus locked in.

That's pretty much how sales work.

 

Well in all honesty he entire company should be BK and no one should get anything so even people who hit their targets should be happy to have a job.

 

exactly. there are all kinds of ways to look at this. if i was in sales i'd be upset if i didnt' get a bonus but i would for damn sure be happy the government saved my company and therefore my job.

 

You guys are confusing a few things, the total bailout money to AIG (in the billions) or the amounts in bonuses paid to AIGFP employees (in the milllions).

both of these numbers are disgusting, in particular though the bonsues being paid to the AIGFP unit, which destroyed the company and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions, is despicable (by the way, lots of these guys are british, which is where that unit was headquartered).

The supposed rationale is that they have to keep them on so that they can help them unwind all of AIG's ****ty trades, or that they're contractually obligated - but honestly I want the governmetn to pull out all legal stops to keep these ass clowns at AIGFP from getting another single cent.

Those f-kers basically wrecked people's lives, destroyed hundreds of billions of people's hard earned money, and now we are paying for it, and we are paying them extoritonate money as a reward because they took the company so far up sh-t creekk that only they know the way back.. It's just wrong. They should all be absolutely ashamed of themselves. To the extent they insist on receiveing these bonuses, they reallly should have to identify themselves and then be blackballed for life.

 

Populist outrage from Sam. rimrocker like.

 

Really? Salespeople live on the bonuses, the salary is often far below the employee's value. If I were a salesperson living on the commissions of my sales, I would rather lose my job so I can go somewhere else and earn money than bust my ass all month/quarter/year only to find out that the company wasn't going to give me the money they owed me. What's the point of working if they don't pay you?

 

I was impressed, too. Looks like all the depositions and memos about boring biz law issues have not yet taken it all out of old Sam.

 

while i sympathize with compensation structures that label general income as bonuses, i doubt many of these people were the hard working salespersons living on commission.

secondly, there aren't any jobs around. so this threat that they will leave, certainly the case in certain situations, isn't that compelling. plus there are thousands of former lawyers and bankers who are recently unemployed and sufficiently talented to take these jobs, without the bonuses.

 

When I first saw this headline over the weekend, I assumed it was completely misreported like the whole executive spa nonsense last year. Maybe people were getting bonuses in a division that was still profitable. You know, like every other division of the company BESIDES the FP division. I can’t believe it’s the FP guys getting paid to unwind all their crappy deals that, for all intentional purposes, bankrupted the entire company.

 

I'm trying to find an article that says more specifically who it is. Obama says it is derivative traders -- from whom I would make the same argument.

I didn't make an argument about them potentially leaving. I was making an argument about why AIG has a moral obligation to pay these bonuses. And, if they were not going to pay these bonuses, they should have fired those guys a long time ago instead of stealing their labor. The salespeople/traders would be screwed about the same financially, but at least they could watch daytime soaps if they were fired.

 

While this sucks, and I'd much rather give the bastards three squares and a hard cot while they worked on a chain gang than millions in bonuses, it offends me much less than the tens of billions that went straight through AIG to European and Asian banks.

 

Let's see.

These guys (for years) ran the company into the ground. Losing money left and right...............making bad investments for a long while. Yet they STILL manage to convince the government of the United States to give them money? I say they deserve that bonus.

 

That part makes logical sense though - AIG was basically offering insurance against certain credit events, and hence it had to pay out against them. If it didn't do so, a cascading chain of failures would have probably continued around the globe and Dow 6500 would be a distant memory. It sucks, but its what we said we had to do, and why we did it.

Paying the jackasses who were directly responsible for setting up this time bomb is the part that doesn't make any sense to me.

 

exactly, its the whole purpose of the bailout, they are deemed to big too fail, if they fail and their obligations aren't met, then the resulting catostrophe would be ginormous

 

Exactly. And the fact that they are being paid to unwind their own idiotic bets makes it all the more nonsensicle.

These guys got millions for selling these CDS's. Now they're getting paid again to unwind them. They got paid to set the time bomb, now they're getting paid again to try and disarm it. After it's already blown up.

Keep in mind, AIG doesn't want to pay these bonuses. They are contractually obligated to do it.

Serious question: What would happen if they just flat out refused to pay them? The FP guys would sue for breach of contract? Is that it?

 

I think so. Like I said though, I think the gov't should explore every legal argument possible to void these contracts, it all depends on the terms. This is apparently what the current plan is, btw. Cuomo also requested copies of all the contracts today.

THe ironic part is, had the governmetn let AIG fail, these guys contracts would have been automatically voided (or at least they would have just joined the line of creditors in Chapter 11). But simply because these guys did such a bad job that bankruptcy is not an option, they get to profit from it. This screams out for some sort of equitable remedy to the contract. (unconscionability is what first came to mind in this instance)

 

Make their names and addresses public and let the mob handle them.