They are running it like a company, they are just going to tax bonuses for anyone that receives them as long as the company is government owned. This is not the company doing it....it is still chugging along, this is the US government as a creditor saying "NO, you can not use your borrowed money for bonuses".....when you get solvent and make a profit, after paying the US back...do whatever you want to do...until then....you are going to lean the heck up. I have no problem with it.....at all...... One day Deep, when you have the opportunity to run a company, and if it fails, as most do, I think you might feel differently. You have to let failures...fail and learn from your mistakes....AIG failed....yet they got a lifeline.....so in leiu of letting everyone go, you cramp down on spending and force them to rethink their methodology. DD
Even though I haven't started a company myself, I have worked with several startups to know when a company needs to "lean the heck up" to a point where some of the best employees are gone, the company is pretty much dead. Only a matter of time, so if you are ok with propping up AIG for 130 billion and keep it afloat until its sold for scraps. Then by all means rip up the contracts, let people go, cuz you aren't expecting to get the money back anyway.
So maybe it would have been a good idea to defeat this bill and work harder to make it better? In other words, provide a stimulus package but not this particular stimulus package?
I am actually with DD on this one. I look at it and see probably the best possible way of actually punishing the high level guys who made the decisions that caused the problem in the first place. I'm not saying it is a good precedent to set necessarily but neither is allowing a corporation to fail, bailing them out, then allowing them to just give that money to the big shots who were making the bad decisions in the first place. Course I am not sure how well it will work and there is the possibilities of the companies very quickly realzing ways around it...say by telling the big wigs hey we are going to lower your salary to 200k and make up the difference on your bonus. If NFL teams do it to skirt the salary cap why wouldnt wall street??
That doesn't work. You could always find a provision in any bill that needs improving. If you say a tiny (and irrelevant, frankly) provision in a bill should be all that's needed to stop it, you'll never get anything done. That's Obama's whole "don't make perfect the enemy of good" philosophy.
While I tend to agree with you in principle on this issue, this analogy breaks down in that, in this scenario, you have specifically been given the ability and right to create the laws.
Sure they can create laws, but what about the fact that this is a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law?
I got mine during this recession. My wife started her new job last month. My brother just got a higher paying one 2 weeks ago. People are hiring, you just have to look a bit harder.
Thats the lie the government keeps telling us. It isn't our money. That money belongs to the Chinese. I have no problem if the government cuts the lifeline to AIG and lets them collapse under what are certainly even more losses. Trying to create special laws like this makes me really afraid for America. I think it is a violation of rights.
It is. I don't think it will hold up under the constitution. It probably won't make it out of the Senate. I think article one talks about not being able to make up laws that punish after the fact. Also it talks about making laws that go after only a certain group of people. I think it violates both of those. I understand the need and justice to go after them, but they will have to find a different way to do it.
I just want to be clear, some of you are ok, with paying up to a $4 million dollar bonus to the same company execs that ran the company into the ground in the first place? That is REALLY what you are saying? DD
I'm not fine with it, but it is a contractual obligation the government had a chance to fix, but decided not to in the stimulus bill. The fact that it is a retroactive law and targets a specific group of people is even scarier and worries me more than those executives getting a bonus. This is not about what is morally right or wrong. It is about our rights and government overstepping its boundaries.
That's my primary ethical problem with the bill, but my understanding is that a bill of attainder primarily has to do with criminal stuff - ie, making something retroactively illegal. I'm not really sure though. I know we can change tax rates downward during a year - not sure if it's ever been tried upward though.
LOL - are you serious? Continuing the same practices that got AIG insolvent in the first place is a problem. Keeping the same crooks in place, making the same questionable financial calls is the problem...they should have fired the entire executive staff......or forced them to take a no-bonus provision before bailing them out..... But, there was no time to do that before the company went completely belly up and screwed over the entire banking industry....so they quickly passed a measure protecting them, but with a sure understanding that things would be run differently. And, what do the AIG executives do since they got this hand out? They keep their hands out...it is sickening. I love that the government is doing this.....they own AIG.....AIG lost the ability to pay it's employees what it wanted to when it needed OUR money to survive. And for those saying it is Chinese money...you do realize that we have to pay that back.....and are currently paying 26% of our tax revenue to INTEREST payments alone on our debt, right? At some point, we have to pay the credit cards off......and get back to being solvent ourselves as a country. AIG.....their execs should not get a NICKEL of bonus money until they are back on their feet and profitable and run correctly. You don't pay people for lousy performance.... SHEESH ! DD
Very few people are in charge of what direction the investments go. You are punishing everyone for the sins of a few. And I would like to point out you are making the same argument the neocons were making for not bailing them out at all.
Casey, the fact that these people still have a PAYING job is good enough, they would all be out on the street looking for work right now...... I was in favor of not bailing them out.......but sense we did it....I am in favor of frugal use of my tax dollars....and paying bonuses is not acceptable. Sorry, they work for the US government now.......until that company flips around....they are on borrowed time.... Normally if a company has to get emergency funding, the bank can put major restrictions on how the money is spent......to me, that is all that is going on here.... DD
Whee did all those great employees get AIG into? If it weren't for those "great" employees who were suppose to be the brightest, AIG would be doing just fine as a regular insurance company.
