They sold all they made. They seemed to want it to be something other than a womans choice for a commuter car. The sales were heavily female. They thought spoilers and a 6 cyl. engine would make it a more universal car. They should have embraced the womans car and run with it.
Plus the Fiero burned. That is hard to ignore when you want to buy a car.
So did Edsel and the Pontiac Aztek. Do you really think an american company has scrapped any of its cars in the past half century because of poor sales?
Not really. Pontiac had to provide steep discounts on the Aztek to get people to buy them, and models often sat around on lots for a very long time. Edsel was probably the same way. I know that when Studebaker went under, the dealers who got the last ones off the line had them sitting on the lots for over a year after, in some cases.
Tuckerfan, I don’t get it. We’re discussing a very specific topic – whether the successful execs at AIG should be paid bonuses. The only reason I started this digression was to correct (more like supplement, I guess) gonzomax’s whiny outrage. Honestly, I don’t care (for this particular discussion) about generalities like why people often leave companies, or how divisions supplement one another, or what happens in Japan or Europe, or whether your experience tells you that corporations are usually top-heavy. The only thing I find relevant in your last post is:
The fact is that people are leaving AIG. And that giving these people bonuses – for successful work they performed – would (potentially) serve to keep them at the company. This is not (necessarily) “thievery”, “looting”, or whatever gonzomax’s epithet-of-the-day is.
It just seems like common sense to me to allot a (relatively minor) sum to keep successful execs there. That’s all.
One of the claims the government made about what they were going to be doing with AIG is dumping parts of the company. Do we know that the folks leaving are not part of the sections of the company which are going to be cut loose?
Also, I’d WAG that it probably sucks be working at AIG right now, since many people outside the company are probably not going to have a positive image of AIG. Under those circumstances, handing out bonuses, unless they’ve got strings attached, probably aren’t going to keep some folks from jumping ship.
Please define successful exec and show how it pertains to AIG. They have been a resounding failure. They have blown tax money on 2 ,count them.2 exec junkets at expensive resorts. They have lost billions of dollars. Why would you want to keep them?
Because it is one small branch of AIG that brought them down. Other areas of the company were, and probably remain, profitable. I know that if I were an executive in, say, casualty insurance and I posted a big profit, I’d be pretty pissed that my bonus is gone. Shoot, I’d polish my resume up and find a new job pretty quickly. If AIG doesn’t want to lose such talented people, then they have to pay bonuses.
Bonus or not, I’d be pretty pissed that a bunch of fuckwits had screwed the company up and be looking to jump ship just on general principles.
Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg No its not a sliver of AIG. Jobs are getting hard to find. I would suggest everyone of them can be replaced. They spend the tax money like it belongs to them. Up to 4 million dollars in bonuses. It is a disgrace.
I do not. Nor am I familiar with what the government claimed in return for this bailout (got a cite?).
What I am given to understand is that the top execs will not get bonuses. If I am shown that something is amiss with any particular allotted bonus, I’ll gladly and cheerfully recant and join in some recreational outrage.
Until that happens, it seems like stupidity to me to not attempt to retain valuable employees.
And that may very well be true, and it’s a salient point that should be considered. That is, if people are likely going to leave anyway, why give them a parting gift? So there’s that. But I do wonder what “strings” you’d consider appropriate for this situation…serfdom, maybe?
Without poring over the corporate structure and related profit/costs, I don’t have a definition of “successful”. At the same time, I’m quite sure that some (probably most) sections aren’t abject failures. I’m not such a dullard that this possibility isn’t a consideration.
As I understand it, the junkets were very much unjustified and deserve heaps of scorn.
I “want to keep them” because they’re now a taxpayer concern. Cut the idiots loose, keep the productive employees, return to profitability, and get the people’s money the fuck out of private business.
Just don’t make it any harder for that to happen.
Fer fuck’s sake. Thank you for that link. Man, some of the people running that place are truly scumbags of the highest order.
With that said, it doesn’t change my mind all that much about bonuses. Let’s say that all 168 execs will get a $4M bonus, which comes to ~$650M. As overinflated as that number is, that’s less than 1/2% of the $152B bailout amount. In relative terms, it’s a pittance. Assuming the bonuses go to people that were not involved in the mismanagement and will return the company to profitability, I still have no problem with it.
To me, ranting about this is not too different from complaining about the Big 3 taking private jets to DC…which, though I thought it was a PR gaffe of tremendous magnitude, was a stupid thing to focus on.
Are we done yet with this digression?
A quick google search only turns up passing mention of AIG in relation to its bailouts. Wiki has a brief mention of seperate entities being created from part of the company, however.
How about something like what is common in the tech industry, where you’re given stock options, but cannot cash them in if you leave the company before a certain date? Or would you consider that to be “serfdom”?
The link gonzomax supplied made explicit that some of the departments that were on the chopping block were in line to receive bonuses. The justification for bonuses was to maintain the attractiveness to potential buyers. Again, I don’t really have a problem with that…assuming those departments did not contribute to the current debacle.
But I’d state again that I think the size of bonuses as now practiced is seriously out of whack. I mean, come on…a “typical” bonus for people in the “life units” is half a year’s salary? And 100-300% for top execs? I’m aghast with flabber at the actual figures.
I have no problem with this (honestly, I didn’t see a way to do it). This would have the added benefit of making bonus worth proportional to future (company) performance. Which is OK (and unlike tech companies) in that we’ve already made the assumption that AIG won’t fail – in fact, we’ve staked $152B on it.