BF2S Forums AIG pays $165 million in bonuses

Wait... AIG is going to pay back the taxpayers... 
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first10 … -handling/

SgtHeihn wrote:

I thought bounses were meant to reward people for doing a good job. Maybe they need to fire those guys and bring in some new blood.

I heard a guy on NPR (some financial expert type) explaining the bonuses, they were mostly what are called 'retention bonuses' and were contractually obligated...the company contracted them as incentives for various employees to (agree to) stay with the company until a certain set date; this was all that was required for the bonus to get paid. He claimed that these were in no way based on performance.

That said, I'm in not defending the situation, but apparently the administration was warned about the bonuses, and Geithner was in a position to include oversight to address them -- they could have gotten out in front of this, but they just didn't.

http://www.time.com/time/business/artic … d=tsmodule


This same commentator said the HE personally thought the gov't, specifically congress, set the stage for the meltdown by legalizing trade in something called 'credit default swaps'
I'm not sure which bill it was he was referring to, but I was reading about what that means here
 
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/30/magazin … /index.htm

Kmarion wrote:

..and I thought you were a Ron Paul fan.

I am, but it's mostly because he was one of the few people who seemed to see this crisis coming beforehand, like Peter Schiff.

If we had followed his advice early on, we wouldn't be in this mess, but now that we are....  well, might as well go all the way.  Halfassed corporate welfare won't get us out of this.  Nationalization and perhaps another war might....