If you have not heard of the outrage over bonuses AIG gave to its employees, I guess you are blissfully not listening to the news these days. Which may not be such a bad thing. Amongst all the politicians' outrage highlighted in the media, what is not highlighted is that the bonuses were NOT given to the same folks who put AIG (and us) in this mess. They are bonuses given to retain or pull in people who can untangle AIG (and us) from this mess. These are some of the few articles that seem to highlight and/or mention it -- an opinion piece in WSJ. Search on Google which turns up this blog site, Welker's Wikinomics, that aims to drive this point home. And this Seattle Times article points out that folks who created the mess have left AIG and those receiving retention bonus are not the same folks.
So knowing that and knowing that most executives returned the bonuses, it sucks to be those employees. The mass media and less complete reporting has transformed hard, tough job into a very very thankless job for folks who are trying to undo the mess. Lesson of the day? Apparently, abandon ship as soon as possible so that you are not mistaken for folks who created the problem.
4 comments:
Let's summarize it.
1) AIG is given the taxpayers money.
2) AIG wants to get back on track and needs to keep plenty of brainy people to achieve that.
3) To keep these brainy people, AIG needs to pay them.
4) AIG uses the taxpayers money to pay these people
5) 80% of AIG is owned by the government/tax payers and yet they mind to pay these brainy people, who are effectively their employees.
Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?
Elli
It's unfortunate that they are being vilified for doing what everyone in the country would have done, which was taken the money.
But I wouldn't go linking that particular WSJ opinion piece. Holman Jenkins is a staunch and rather out-spoken conservative.
I think part of the problem is, people don't look behind the name of corporation or organization. It's a curious problem. Corporations are fictitious creatures. They live forever. But really, corporate actions can only be taken by people who run them. If those bad people go away, the corporate name doesn't disappear... people working for corporation are stuck with a bad image. Maybe the problem IS having fictitious entities. Who knows? Or maybe I'm just totally convoluted and losing my mind. =P
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