# The AIG taxpayer bailout well spent **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 7, 2008, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891 "2008-10-07T19:45:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![buttonjockey308](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@buttonjockey308](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buttonjockey308)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/101 "2008-10-08T17:35:13Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Perhaps my youth spent railing against the evils of capitalism weren’t that misspent after all. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s capitalists. In all honesty and with as straight a face as I can say it, one of these bastards needs to be publicly hanged and all of them need to have every earthly posession taken and sold on the open market with the proceeds going back to the coffers. Each of these miserable blighters need to be penniless, homeless and altogether desititute until their last days. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/102 "2008-10-08T17:37:39Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > I had the audacity to post that I didn’t think any corporate CEO was worth millions of dollars of salary, and was shouted down by many people In defense of that shout down, good CEOs ARE worth millions of dollars. Take AIG for instance, if they had good executives who made good business decisions, they wouldn’t have lost tens of billions of dollars and needed a government bailout to continue to exist. So, AIG’s executives aren’t worth a plug nickel, how much are MetLife’s executives worth, if they made the right decisions\* and kept the company strong? \*I don’t know if Met Life is in any better shape than AIG, but there has to be some insurance company out there that isn’t ready to go bankrupt. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/103 "2008-10-08T17:50:00Z")
I wouldn’t make the ex-CEOs homeless and destitute; I’d take away their money and toys and give them a job working as, say, a receptionist. Or a data entry clerk. For regular peon wages. I think that would be a truly fitting punishment for them - to experience life at the bottom of the totem pole, far beneath the notice of the people who make decisions that affect them every day. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/104 "2008-10-08T18:06:54Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > It’s not capitalism that’s the problem, it’s capitalists. > > In all honesty and with as straight a face as I can say it, one of these bastards needs to be publicly hanged and all of them need to have every earthly posession taken and sold on the open market with the proceeds going back to the coffers. Each of these miserable blighters need to be penniless, homeless and altogether desititute until their last days. And then they will be replaced by another brigade of money grubbing fuck wits. If you have an infestation of weeds in your lawn, mowing the lawn isn’t going to solve it. Rip it out by the roots. ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/105 "2008-10-08T18:19:43Z")
I guess it is permitted to call a troll a troll and **Rand Rover** is certainly one. Hey Rand Rover want to become a real member here instead of a guest? I’ll admit I was totally taken aback by his fancy legal vocabulary: \*Are you a lawyer? If so, did you take corporations in school? \* Did I take “corporations”? Hmmm I don’t know. There are a lot of things to study to become proficient in law. I think I signed up for _Courts 101_ and then progressed to _Laws 201_, onward to _Things That People Sign 301_, and successfully moved on to _Things You Shouldn’t Do Because They Are Against The Law 401_. Okay as for a punishment for these CEO fuckwits? How about giving them a choice? They can work at McDonalds or face imprisonment on Devil’s Island. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/106 "2008-10-08T18:22:56Z")
CNN says AIG went through 62 billion of the 85 billion bailout already. They love to save for a rainy day. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/107 "2008-10-08T18:35:55Z")
Well. It’s nice to see AIG reinvest that money back into the local economy. What? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/108 "2008-10-08T18:37:51Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > I wouldn’t make the ex-CEOs homeless and destitute; I’d take away their money and toys and give them a job working as, say, a receptionist. I would give them a job sucking my shit out of a dead owl. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/109 "2008-10-08T18:40:38Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > I would give them a job sucking my shit out of a dead owl. How are you going to get your shit… nvm. I don’t want to know. ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/110 "2008-10-08T18:44:05Z")
That kind of struck me as odd. Every young attorney I know took Business Associations or Business Organisations (we called it BizAss or BizOrgs). AFAIK this is what the class was called years before I graduated. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weird\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@The\_Weird\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weird_One)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/111 "2008-10-08T18:47:00Z")
If AIG can spend our money so freely, then they can afford to pay it back, with interest, once the economy turns around. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/112 "2008-10-08T19:05:53Z")
> [@anu-la1979](#): > > That kind of struck me as odd. > > Every young attorney I know took Business Associations or Business Organisations (we called it BizAss or BizOrgs). AFAIK this is what the class was called years before I graduated. It was Corporations when I failed to avoid taking it. Different schools call it different things. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/113 "2008-10-08T19:11:00Z")
> [@DeadlyAccurate](#): > > This is the kind of story that has the primitive, medieval part of my brain envisioning these guys dragged naked through the streets and hanged. I **don’t** want that to happen to these people. I really don’t. Mob rule is bad, and I don’t think their activities deserve death. I do. Their malfeasance hasn’t “merely” ran their company into the ground, and its not like they made the mistake of betting on the _wrong_ horse (like investing heavily in battery technology and then someone discovers a way to make fuel cells for practically nothing) more like they took an old nag, shot it full of steroids and amphetamines, then put it in race after race, only to be surprized at it dropping dead. They did things that even a bumpkin such as myself thought was incredibly stoopid (“Interest only” mortgages? ARMs? I ain’t even got a college degree and I _knew_ those were bad ideas.) and if they had only hurt themselves, that would be one thing. They, however, have managed to take _the entire fucking global economy with them!_ In addition to the folks who’ve had the value in their 401K’s evaporate (and aren’t I glad I’m too poor to be able to afford one of _those_), we’ve had [at least one instance of someone being so despondent over how fucked up things are, that they felt their only choice was murder/suicide.](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081006/ap_on_re_us/bodies_found) > [@](#): > > An unemployed man with an advanced finance degree who was despondent over his own financial problems shot and killed his wife, three children, mother-in-law and then himself in an upscale home in a gated community, police said Monday. > > Officers found the bodies Monday morning after the wife failed to show up at a neighbor’s home to go to work, Deputy Chief Michel Moore said. The deaths occurred sometime after Saturday evening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, someone who’s that unstable is probably going to do that kind of thing eventually no matter what happens with the economy. That’s _beside_ the point. Study after study has shown that when the economy goes in the crapper crime rates go up, people’s health goes into decline, and the world just goes to shit. _If_ a company is “too big to fail” then when the government steps into bail it out, there needs to be some _serious_ retribution for the pricks that put it in that shape. Perhaps if this were done, we’d have a little less “irrational exuberance” in the financial sector. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/114 "2008-10-08T19:20:24Z")
> [@wolf\_meister](#): > > I guess it is permitted to call a troll a troll and **Rand Rover** is certainly one. Hey Rand Rover want to become a real member here instead of a guest? I really hope he does, it’s been awhile since we’ve had a fool as prolific around here. Next to actually learning things, comedy is the reason I come here. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/115 "2008-10-08T19:28:59Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > So, AIG’s executives aren’t worth a plug nickel, how much are MetLife’s executives worth, if they made the right decisions\* and kept the company strong? > > \*I don’t know if Met Life is in any better shape than AIG, but there has to be some insurance company out there that isn’t ready to go bankrupt. I’ll let you know if I still have a job next month.☹ ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/116 "2008-10-08T19:31:48Z")
> [@Siege](#): > > I’ve worked in travel and tourism. Arrangements can be cancelled and, while it may cost people some non-refundable deposits, it should still be cheaper than going through with the original plans. Even if was impossible to cancel the original arrangements without it costing every dime orignally spent, maybe someone should have thought about the damage to AIG’s reputation that little junket would do. As I think **eleanor rigby** said earlier, either they have no idea how bad this would look or they just don’t care. Either way, in my opinion, it demonstrates a level of irresponsibility and entitlement worthy of a three year old or a spoiled teenager. To me, as a taxpayer who lives frugally, it feels like a slap in the face. I’ve been involved with conference arrangements, and can back this up. In addition, you certainly don’t pay for food in advance, which seemed a pretty hefty part of this charge. Maybe the execs are going to enjoy being yelled at by Congresspeople? ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/117 "2008-10-08T19:34:32Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > CNN says AIG went through 62 billion of the 85 billion bailout already. They love to save for a rainy day. I can not find this story on their website or a couple other news sites I checked. Did they say what AIG spent the money on? Was it on buying out loans or new diamond necklaces for their dogs or what? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/118 "2008-10-08T20:00:37Z")
> [@anu-la1979](#): > > That kind of struck me as odd. > > Every young attorney I know took Business Associations or Business Organisations (we called it BizAss or BizOrgs). AFAIK this is what the class was called years before I graduated. At my (fake and made up) law school (that I really didn’t attend) you could take (i) Corporations (3 hours) plus Agency and Unincorporated Associations (2 hours) or (ii) Business Organizations (4 hours). I took the first route and now would rather eat owl shit out of a dead Cervaise then read another agency case. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/119 "2008-10-08T20:05:41Z")
> [@mlees](#): > > How are you going to get your shit… nvm. I don’t want to know. Two CEOs, one owl. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2008, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891/120 "2008-10-08T20:08:23Z")
Also, we’ve got some real long-term thinkers in this thread. What effect do you think your proposed punishments would have on other people’s desire to be a top executive at a big company, and what effect would that have on the economy as a whole? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-aig-taxpayer-bailout-well-spent/466891.md?page=7)