So who actually accepted the AIG bonuses? And when is Obama going to stop spending political capital on this mess?
Nup. This show has obviously been around for some time, and if the latest happenings from the mega-insurer AIG (which now stands for Association of Individual Greed) don’t finally join the dots on the monstrous picture of greed/corruption, then nothing will.
Obama wanted to be the 'change' president, and part of the way he wanted to operate included instigating one of the most rigorous vetting processes ever known for top level staffers in his newly White-washed-house. Trouble is, he kept coming up with duds who were less than frank in their tax-paying, or their hiring of domestics. Tom Daschle was pretending to be ordinary folk while swanning around town in chauffeur-driven limos à grace to some kindly financier.
Yes, it’s a little harsh, but if you start taking stock of what’s been going on from Enron (and before, but let’s not quibble) right through to Bernard Madoff and this week’s bonus revelation fiasco with the Associated Individual Greed experts, it fits like a toddler’s jigsaw.
The big question has to be who are these people at AIG who have taken millions in bonuses? The company took billions from the taxpayer in bailouts, flicked much of it off to associated banks and companies around the world, then used bailout money to pay mega bonuses, pleading it was contractually obligated to do so.
Far from wanting to advocate a naming, tarring and feathering, I am advocating a naming, tarring and feathering.
You see, if you or I had a job in a local store, for example, and we blew all the profits we would not get a bonus for doing so. Not even a teensy-weensy little bonus in line with our teensy-weensy little wage. What if we worked in a factory and our management skills were such that we lost all the contracts and almost put the business out of action? What bonus would we be entitled to expect? The answer is none. Zip. Zero.
It seems the way to secure a bonus is to run a really, really really big organisation into the ground—work really, really, really hard at stuffing it up to the point that the company is about to go belly up—and voila, bonus. Bonus-uninterruptus. Bonus so well defined and protected by legal contract that all the other people who have been disenfranchised by your alpha ‘skills’ can go take a flying leap.
Obama needs to make some sense of this, and quickly, because while he’s spending bailout money faster than Mrs Madoff can hide the diamonds, he’s also spending political capital. AIG has given him the financial equivalent of a raspberry and a pouty little “you’re not the boss of us” and he can’t let that go.
Under a system called Capitalism the AIG attitude could have been quite correct in its spurning of government oversight. However now it is all a little more akin to a thing called Socialism given that the US government owns about 80 percent of AIG and bought that share using millions and millions and millions of taxpayer’s funds. That’s pretty much boss status, so Obama and those staffers who did make it through the vetting process had better work out a way to get back those bonuses.
Again, who the hell are these people who have taken the bonuses? Do they actually believe they are entitled to the money paid by others who work for average wages in jobs that may now be extraordinarily precarious? Does the meaning of the word ‘bonus’ need a serious rejigging? Do they all still work for AIG or have they taken the money and run?
Will they have the guts to refund their individual bonuses, contract or no? While the bonuses amount to a pittance in the great scheme of the trillions now talked about, it’s symbolically crippling for corporate