AIG

[xoxoxoBruce]

Teenagers don't count they're expendable, because we can make more just like them.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Recently a teenager was pulled over and the cops made him lie face down on the road in cuffs.

He got run over.

He was white middle class male.

He shouldn't have hated America.

[classicman]

Treasury objects to AIG bonus payments

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Embattled insurer American International Group agreed to revamp its bonus structure on Saturday after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner objected to its plans to pay out substantial sums for 2008, Obama administration officials and the company's chairman said.

AIG (AIG.N), which has received three government bailouts totaling $180 billion, will sharply cut remaining salaries for 2009 for top executives of its AIG Financial Products unit and will work with Treasury to realign 2008 bonuses to reflect the company's restructuring and repayment goals, AIG Chairman Edward Liddy said in a letter to Geithner.

AIG Financial Products was the unit that made bad bets on toxic mortgages that led to the company's near collapse.

Liddy said the firm was legally obligated to make already-committed 2008 employee-retention payments, the value of which were set last year before problems arose at the Financial Products unit.

"Some of these payments are coming due on March 15, and, quite frankly, AIG's hands are tied," Liddy said, adding that he found the arrangements "distasteful."

But he said he would work with Geithner to resolve the issue.

An Obama administration official said it was unacceptable for Wall Street firms receiving government assistance to pay million-dollar bonuses, but concluded that the retention payments were legally binding.

The Treasury will continue to negotiate with AIG to bring these payments down and seek to recoup the funds through mechanism outside of these contracts.

I have nothing to say - I'm too pissed off.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by classicman

Treasury objects to AIG bonus payments



I have nothing to say - I'm too pissed off.

Feeling a little used, are we?

[tw]

Originally Posted by TGRR

Feeling a little used, are we?

The NY Times is now asking an obvious question on 14 Mar 2009:

JOHN Thain has one. So do Richard Fuld, Stanley O’Neal and Vikram Pandit. For that matter, so does John Paulson, the hedge fund kingpin.

Yes, all five have fat bank accounts, even now, and all have made their share of headlines. But these current and former giants of finance also are all card-carrying M.B.A.’s.

The master’s of business administration, a gateway credential throughout corporate America, is especially coveted on Wall Street; in recent years, top business schools have routinely sent more than 40 percent of their graduates into the world of finance.

But with the economy in disarray and so many financial firms in free fall, analysts, and even educators themselves, are wondering if the way business students are taught may have contributed to the most serious economic crisis in decades.

Instead of being viewed as long-term economic stewards, he said, managers came to be seen as mainly as the agents of the owners — the shareholders — and responsible for maximizing shareholder wealth.

“A kind of market fundamentalism took hold in business education,” Professor Khurana said. “The new logic of shareholder primacy absolved management of any responsibility for anything other than financial results.”

Wondering? How can people trained to stifle innovation and trained to concepts advocated by the mafia only cause wonder?

Business education is big business, too. Some 146,000 graduate degrees in business were awarded in 2005-06, roughly one-fourth of the 594,000 graduate degrees awarded that school year, according to the Education Department.

Once Leigh University was nicknamed the Engineers. Lehigh is diminishing their expensive engineering school and expanding their MBA education. MBAs also cost less to educate - cost controls. So Lehigh changed their name from "Engineers" to "Mountain Hawks". Actually knowing how things work is no longer glorious, honored, or financially rewarding.

A study of cheating among graduate students, published in 2006 in the journal Academy of Management Learning & Education, found that 56 percent of all M.B.A. students cheated regularly — more than in any other discipline. The authors attributed that to “perceived peer behavior”

The purpose of a company is profit ... just like the mafia. How many called 'justified with facts' criticisms of MBAs a rant? They were only doing as trained.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by classicman

Treasury objects to AIG bonus payments

..."Some of these payments are coming due on March 15, and, quite frankly, AIG's hands are tied," Liddy said, adding that he found the arrangements "distasteful."

But he said he would work with Geithner to resolve the issue.

An Obama administration official said it was unacceptable for Wall Street firms receiving government assistance to pay million-dollar bonuses, but concluded that the retention payments were legally binding...

I have nothing to say - I'm too pissed off.

ARRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

NO, THEY AREN'T LEGALLY BINDING! OK, I'm not a lawyer, but if we hadn't bailed them out, they wouldn't fucking be there! there would be NO MONEY, PERIOD. Just go through and fucking FIRE EVERYONE that isn't willing to live by the rules everyone else is being forced to live by! We OWN 80% of that company! and these assholes are the ones who caused the meltdown of the company in the first place!

ARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
someone please come over and stop me from tearing all my hair out!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yes it is. That money was frozen in trust in 2007, to be paid to the people that stayed with AIG. It's legally binding contract of delayed payment.

[skysidhe]

I am wondering why the treasury is faking being surprised.

[classicman]

So they can blame Bush - Duh!

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by classicman

So they can blame Bush - Duh!

Just because you see things as a left-right dichotomy doesn't mean they do.

Maybe they're just owned, too. There's no guarantee than ANY group of politicians even remotely gives a fuck about his/her constituents...in fact, every piece of evidence suggests otherwise. Both parties are equally guilty, and we've made certain there will never be a viable third option.

No, it seems far more likely that the republic has failed, not because these bastards can get away with literally anything, but because we let them.

Congratulations, America, we've finally shat on Washington's grave.

[DanaC]

You say that like it's a good thing...

[classicman]

No TGRR, you miss my point - getting elected lately had become more of "the other guy/woman/party is worse." They know that attention American's attention spans are short and the D's will beat that drum right through 2010 and beyond. Just like the R's will continue to beat the spend/spend spend rhetoric. They spend their time trying to stay in power more so than doing right by the people that put them there in the first place - both sides.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by classicman

No TGRR, you miss my point - getting elected lately had become more of "the other guy/woman/party is worse." They know that attention American's attention spans are short and the D's will beat that drum right through 2010 and beyond. Just like the R's will continue to beat the spend/spend spend rhetoric. They spend their time trying to stay in power more so than doing right by the people that put them there in the first place - both sides.

These days, "elections" are simply when they put up two Punch and Judy dolls for the rubes to throw rotten fruit at. Then we pick one of them to be president, and pretend that we somehow made a big difference.

The whole system, the republic itself, has failed. But we can still stick magnets on our SUVs and pretend that America is still the greatest nation on Earth, right? HAW HAW!

Bitterly yours,
TGRR

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by TGRR

... But we can still stick magnets on our SUVs and pretend that America is still the greatest nation on Earth, right? HAW HAW!

Bitterly yours,
TGRR

magnets that are made in China... woot.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by classicman

No TGRR, you miss my point - getting elected lately had become more of "the other guy/woman/party is worse." They know that attention American's attention spans are short and the D's will beat that drum right through 2010 and beyond. Just like the R's will continue to beat the spend/spend spend rhetoric. They spend their time trying to stay in power more so than doing right by the people that put them there in the first place - both sides.

Yes, our attention spans are short because of all the brilliant technology we've created that's supposed to be so great (I'm referring to the societal advances smackdown thread in Homebase) but really, on a grand scale, aren't. We can't see the forest for the trees.