I'm not really angry at AIG anymore. My outlook on the whole debacle is somewhere between The Joker (The Dark Knight) and The Comedian (Watchmen), it's all so fucking hysterical. If Karl Marx and John Steinbeck got together to craft a Capitalist Villain for a broadway musical they'd write something like AIG, then come back the morning after, and both say, "Nah, who are we kidding, no one company is both this evil and this stupid at the same time."
The newest AIG outrage comes from New York's Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, who disclosed in a letter to Congress that Eleven Executives that AIG paid "retention bonuses" to -- bonuses whose stated goal is to retain people -- left the company after being paid their retention bonuses.
From CNN.com:
AIG paid 73 employees bonuses of more than $1 million, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo informed Congress in a letter Tuesday.
Congress is looking at ways to deal with the outrage surrounding AIG's controversial bonuses.
Cuomo also wrote that 11 of the employees no longer work for the company. The largest bonus paid was $6.4 million and seven more people received more than $4 million each.
"Until we obtain the names of these individuals, it is impossible to determine when and why they left the firm and how it is that they received these payments," Cuomo wrote to a congressional committee.
If you didn't hear that, that was me sighing as I re-read that pull from CNN.
Now the real questions remains, What to do? Ideally, when AIG was nationalized in September these contracts should've been voided by the new owners (Us), well too late now. Maybe Timmah will force AIG to re-pay these bonuses over time, but the reality is that AIG is broke and getting broker with no end in sight. I tend to agree with Robert Reich -- we own, now let's act like we own it. Get rid of AIG management (again) and go about the business of breaking up the company once and for all.
And, in the meantime, take a moment and marvel at the sheer monster that is AIG. Never was a more perfect villain ever crafted for such a sad play.
UPDATE: Huffington Post has more specifics on Andrew Cuomo's findings and a reproduction of AG Cuomo's letter to Congress. Thanks for the Rec List.