If he caught you spending it on beer and you were an alcoholic , That would be about the right analogy.
So, now that the government is the majority shareholder in AIG, why can’t they call aspecial metting, elect a new board of directors and turf the current management for incompetance?
Of course they have gone through 62 bill of the 85 billion so far.
The reality of what occurred seems to be dramatically different from the series of events assumed by most of the participants in this thread.
From here:
"In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, obtained by ABC News, Liddy said “not a single corporate executive from AIG headquarters attended.” According to Liddy, only 10 of the 100 guests at the retreat worked for AIG…
“It’s very much accepted practice in the insurance business, especially to reward high-performing individual agents,” said AIG spokesperson Nicholas Ashooh."
Basically, this was some sort of rewards program for agents selling life insurance, essentially a separate entity from the high risk investment branch which fucked over the rest of AIG and one of the parts of the AIG empire now up on the auctioning block as they scramble to repay the $100 B + now owed to the Fed under a frankly less than sweetheart loan term. To preserve the value of that asset for the rest of AIG, it probably isn’t a good idea to go breaking promises to the infrastructure that makes up what’s left of the profitable part of your business. I won’t necessarily defend it, but what transpired isn’t nearly as grossly negligent as people seem to think it was. I think it’s a toss-up, myself.
Nuke them from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure:mad:
Why are these scum not doing time in the Federal PMITA “Hotel and Resort”?
If we’re done analogizing for the moment…
My husband works for a very large international construction management firm. It is completely privately-owned; every employee has the opportunity (and is encouraged) to buy stocks in the company. The high-level executives have A LOT of stocks in the company. They make tasty salaries, but they also have stocks that perform better when the company performs better. The executives make decisions that put more money in THEIR pockets, but because the company is employee-owned, their decisions also put more money in the EMPLOYEE pockets.
This is the kind of scenario I’d like to see more of; CEO income being tied to their decisions primarily, and everyone else’s secondarily (so that they also benefit when the CEOs benefit, and the CEOs have good motivation to benefit everyone).
I can see where you’re coming from, but they could have found any number of other ways to make their top 100 producers feel appreciated without spending nearly $5000 on each of them in one week
My husband and I didn’t spend that much on ourselves for our wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii.
<AIG executive> Well, you’re apparently one of the proletariat, who would not appreciate the finer things in life anyway.
Hey, we was fancy at our wedding. I was wearing clothes and everything.
The analogy doesn’t hold for me, because, 400k is what, 8 to 10 times the national average annual income level for the rest of us?
Hell, that’s nothin’. when my folks got married, they were wearing shoes! Both of 'em! I oughta know, I shined 'em!
Sorry Euphoneous, I didn’t see your post.
But I disagree with this above. These companies didn’t lose money because their execs took luxurious vacations. Almost every exec does that; successful and not. Now, if they were caught using the $85 billion trying to give out subprime mortgages, that would be an apt analogy…
Look at my last line again: they haven’t figured out how to manage money. Considering that is ostensibly their, you know, JOB, it frustrates me that they appear to be resistant to learning.
They may have been locked into it. These perks are designed to give the salespeople extra incentive and they are usually offered to the salesperson well in advance of the trip in writing ( sell x amount between date y and z and receive an expense paid trip to our conference at a luxury spa ), there is even sometimes a sliding scale giving additional perks related to the trip – airfare, spa treatment packages, golf outings-----in exchange for reaching higher sales numbers.
I was never fond of these junkets, my philosophy was pay me a good commission and give me a good product to sell and I will buy my own spa vacations.
But the way they are offered could well constitute a legal obligation…I have even seen perks like this set out in the same documents that give the salespeople their commission structure and draw amounts each year, and I am certain some of those would be enforcable.
Damn! I’ll bet you were born with a , um , spoon in your mouth, huh?
Plausible.
In fact, this is the only scenario where I might begrudgingly accept the whole affair and let them off with mid-pineappling to never again write such idiocy into their commission policies.
But, that theory implies that they recognized how this whole thing would completely destroy their credibility when viewed from the outside. So, they are not absolved from doing any sort of pre-emptive damage control.
Well, we didn’t give them the money so they could look at it. Spent doesn’t necessarily equal waste.
I can’t help but think that, given recent events, these executives should have been pretty open to the reasonable suggestion: “From a purely PR standpoint, the company hopes you’ll understand that saving money at this time is more important than your contractually specified foot massages; and hey, by the way, isn’t it great that YOU STILL HAVE A JOB?”
It was tax payer money. Now it is theirs. they apparently will treat it just like they treated the money they had before. Huge bonuses and salaries ,vacations whatever they feel like. They do not demonstrate that they have learned the errors of their ways.That is not how you earn the trust of the people.
This is an article about the almost 40 billion, second AIG bailout. The 82 is gone. Makes me all warm and fuzzy.