S2
<“pursue every single legal avenue” to recover $165 million >
I've been watching the politicians and news media thrash around in the chum of the AIG bonus issue. I do understand how the anger is palpable, however, taxing those bonuses is a dumb move for the following reasons:
- first, most bonus plans are legal contracts, as everybody knows, and this will be tied up in courts for years.
- having the Congress enact special taxation for these particular bonuses is really stupid and a misuse of Congressional legislative power.
- what ever happened to horse trading?....Geitner sits down with AIG and says, no more money until you guys give the bonuses back.
- there are probably a core of people in AIG that absolutely should not get bonuses (or worse) - those are the guys who sold derivative instruments and put the entire company in the crapper...they are a tiny but lethal group - there are probably hundreds of other people who sold insurance and ran the core businesses and contributed to the profits of the company, thereby reducing the amount of public funds needed for the bailout(mind boggling as that is) - you screw them and you just guaranteed base salaries to go up substantially driving the cost of product if you don't have a bonus plan. Bonus plans are usually one year hits and are not built into the base cost structure....they usually are efficient and tied to profit numbers..not vapor.
- Again, I do understand the political rage, but I just hope they are spending time on the real solutions and not posturing...otherwise, there is no real difference between Rick Santelli and the members of Congress....except we're not paying Santelli.
And, I happen to catch Hardball last night....who is the stand in for Matthews? I'm not a huge Matthews fan, but his replacement was an imbecile.
Maybe my grandmother was right..."if you don't have something nice to say....."
Altair19 |
