Wonkette
Well this is sort of neat! An actual AIG-FP executive wrote an op-ed in the Times explaining why he is not the most evil biological form on the planet short of the Ebola virus, and he makes some good points, such as: not everybody in the AIG-FP unit fucked up the world. It was only the credit default swap people.
Also, employees were repeatedly promised their bonuses over the past six months, and yes it does kind of suck for them that now they don’t get them because of politics. But jesus christ:
So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.
That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget.
When will these people learn that arguing you made a lot of money “because of hard work” will not win you any points with people who work equally hard but make very little (to say nothing of those who have no jobs at all due to the fuckups of this editorialist’s colleagues), and this is in fact the very sort of vain insulting bullshit attitude that makes people despise bankers?
Add that to his bit at the end about believing that “I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent,” while everybody else in America just has to pay boring old taxes that go wherever their elected representatives decide the money goes, and we are forced to conclude that this gentleman’s hard-earned $742,006.40 in bonus money should go to the purchase of a giant bag of dicks for him to eat.
Dear A.I.G., I Quit! [New York Times]
I think the words, “GO Fuck yourself” were invented just for such a sanctimonious occasion.
I’ll donate the catsup.
The mind swims.
I agree. People who never went to college deserve and equal shot at managing somebody else’s money. The only reason they can’t get your hamburger order right is because they’re not being challenged enough.
blah blah fuckin blah. go back to your hole.
“organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn” = prostitutes
That’s a big bag of dicks. Hope he’s hungry.
I don’t work in the financial sector but like everywhere else my employer is feeling the pain of the current economic downturn. We were told there would be no merit raises this year as part of a larger effort to cut spending. Better then lay-offs I suppose. So I couldn’t care less that AIG people might not get their bonuses. Times are tight. Fuck you AIG. Suck it up with the rest of us.
ManchuCandidate: And irresponsible. Dang the mess these execs helped create is sick.
On the flip side… a Queens Madoff victim just won $1500 in the lottery using Madoff’s prison #s. So maybe there is hope!?!?
http://www.governmentalityblog.com/my_weblog/2009/03/guy-wins-lottery-playing-madoffs-prison-id.html
groove: Wow, its all so simple now that you explained poor people failing so well!
Also, his wife wears a cloth coat and he has a dog named Checkers.
“I deserve”
Please put this on your tombstone, soon.
prizepig: Why doesn’t he just give it to the St. Vincent de Paul Society? Or a homeless shelter
Zhu Bajie
groove: It’s funny when people boast about going to college (where you can major in PowerPoint!) as if it were some kind of accomplishment.
Did they offer the janitors a bonus?
What a shitfuck. He’s lucky to be able to resign.
…did he just call his OWN company as well as the Federal government that is keeping his abscess of company afloat; money pits?
Yeah. People who spend their time writing things like “giant bag of dicks for him to eat” clearly work as hard as, and should be paid at least as much as, this guy who partied his way to a graduate degree at M.I.T.
Some perspective: Tiger Woods makes over $50 million each year for rolling a ball into a hole in the ground. Madonna’s estimated wealth is somewhere north of $850 million. Jack Black makes over $1 million per movie.
Please, please, for the love of God, get a grip.
Bankers Worked Hard For Their Money…SO YOU BETTER TREAT THEM RIGHT!
I’m shocked, shocked, that their is gambling in Casablanca. Round up the usual suspect. I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship. I’m shocked, shocked, that crooks were running AIG into the ground and letting the taxpayers pick up the tab!
Pop Secret: If it’s so easy…
the mayor is the problem…
the flagpole is the answer
I worked hard too!!! My American Dream is to have a harem of 200 Pan-Asian concubines!!!
I’M ENTITLED TO MY DREAM!!!
I WORKED HARD!!!
WHAT A JERK.
On a more serious note, this editorial perfectly encapsulates the total disconnect with not just reality, but even logic, that is endemic in the financial industry. The editorialist writes that it is hard work that justifies his riches, and then, in the next sentence, agrees his caste has been overpaid. So which is it, chief? It can’t be both, or does it not matter so long as whatever bullshit you trot out has been effective in securing your ill-gotten gains?
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: Yeah, but Tiger Woods didn’t burn down his house, shit in Katie Couric’s mouth and then wonder where the sycophants all went. He could actually put the ball in the hole.
Fuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkk you. I have multiple friends being “furloughed.” They don’t even get to decide how to spend their own money, as they now are not being paid.
Hard work is my mom, a receptionist trying to work two jobs to keep her head above water, who wouldn’t have the time to sit down and write sanctimonious op-eds. I swear, if we could just start fining these people for arrogance, we’d solve the financial crisis in a week.
…this guy personifies the twisted Republican mantra!
-Rich = Hard Worker
-Poor = Wellfare queen
-Tax = Waste
“I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget.”
Translation: “My company is a rickety piece of shyt and I don’t want to dump my own money down a rat-hole like the dumb ass federal government! So just give me my fukkin bonus so I can move to Europe and watch the rest of you starve!”
SlouchingTowardsWasilla:
In the greater scheme of things, what Tiger and Madonna do doesn’t affect me so why the fuck should I care. On the other hand, if Tiger Woods failing to win the Masters or Madonna’s next sucky album causes world wide economic disaster then I’d be pissed.
Does it really matter the guy got an advanced degree at MIT? All the fancy degrees in the world aren’t going to help when one massively fucks up. Tell that to the victims.
$742,006.40 = one enormous bag of dicks or one former Vice-President.
As long as we’re talking sanctimonious bullshit, can we include the feigned outrage of Congress and the media about bonuses that had nothing to do with performance and really weren’t that loathsome, as pretend internet boyfriend Nate Silver explained a week or two ago?
Will his home be on the bus tour?
groove: hey smart guy, you could say the same thing about working at mcdonalds or working as a lineperson for the electric company, or being a firefighter, or all those other college-free jobs you think are so easy.
My favorite bit of this guy’s screed? When he describes how he EARNED that $742,006.40! “Most rcently, during the dismantling of AIG-FP, I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index blah blah blah…”
He’s an INTEGRAL PLAYER, baby!
God forbid we let some pointed-headed bureaucrat on a guvmint salary bust up this monster, not when there’s MIT-trained INTEGRAL PLAYERS ready to pitch in for a measly 3/4 mill!
Coincidence that Jake picked the week Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were on vacation to share his thoughts?
You be the judge.
Thx SKS - I read that NYT piece earlier and thought, “what a bunch of self-serving swill.” I remember those “I worked hard for my money” arguments back in the early 90’s from rich people who didn’t want healthcare reform. Fucktards.
The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.
But I don’t understand. I mean, YOUR division didn’t do anything wrong! Why would you be ashamed about being paid a $742,006.40 bonus by a company that destroyed the economy? An amount your average middle class family (making $40,000 a year) would take around eighteen and a half years to earn? That comes from the taxes of those middle class families that your company has already screwed out of their retirement savings?
You should write a letter to the New York Times about how wronged you are!
Did I say “fuck you?” Why, yes, yes I did.
The communist nazi AIG Goldman-Sachs illuminati industrial complex is proud to announce Douchebag McGee has donated his entire bonus to our self help program “helping people help themselves: social darwinism + domestic malthus = win!” Go sit on a plunger. Also.
HE DRIVES A DODGE STRATUS!
‘It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know’
For the few magic beings on this planet that earn their place in the stratosphere of the monies, good for you! For all the dipshits who sold their soul, stomped over others or basically called daddy/mommy/friends of daddy or mommy for assistance I wish you a scary-as-hell-trip-to-reality-that-will-cause-you-much-pain-and-make-you-ugly-if-you’re-not-already-and-if-you-have-a-penis-may-it-hurt-for-the-rest-of-your-days-and-if-you-don’t-then-may-you-have-cramps-that-make-you-wish-you-were-dead. Or some such.
If this person took his proceeds and bought enough piano wire to hang himself and the rest of AIG-FP, then I might feel sympathy; grandstanding, however, not so much.
What a whiner. He should be glad. In the olden days, a guy in his position wouldn’t just have his ‘bonus’ taken away, HE’D BE GUILLOTINED.
Chin up there, Bud!
His use of the word “dictate” is the tell.
groove: It is easy to prove poor people are lazy and undeserving… if only I had one of those rags to riches stories (they’re abundant, ain’t they?)to prove this…. I KNOW! WILL SMITH. RUBIK’S CUBE. YOUNG SON. 1980S REAGAN IS KING.
throw in QUEEN’S “SHOW MUST GO ON” (to show we’re cool with the ‘gay’ thing, obvi)…
“I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom” -
please die a painful and lingering death. Scumbag.
Okay, Mister. You work for an enormous insurance company, AN INSURANCE COMPANY! You arrogant asshole. MANY people work VERY hard. People smarter than you Mr. Prick, if you can imagine. They just aren’t greedy like you. They stop to reflect on what value they have to society. Do YOU do that? No, you don’t, because you are a greedy parasite. Just go ahead and be your greedy disgusting pig self, but don’t, dear Jesus, expect people to sympathize.
TheGlow: +1
As I read this I was struck by a vision of breathtaking clarity:
Its the AIG offices, the overhead lights are off but there’s a disco ball and one of those flashing multi-colored light things bathing the scene in red, purple and orange light. AIG executives are partying like its 1999. Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money” is playing. Jake DeSantis looks up for a moment from the line of coke he is snorting out of a stripper’s asscrack. He sets aside the rolled up hundred dollar bill he took from my parents’ retirement.
“You know what?” Jake DeSantis says to the stripper. She doesn’t respond, having long since lost the ability to do anything but gyrate due to the combination of Kristal, cocaine and high-end Wall Street roofies. “I *do* work hard for the money. I just got a great idea for a NYT editorial,”
Fuck this guy.
ManchuCandidate:
I couldn’t agree more, I also think colloquialisms such as “Cunt”, sprint to mind…
This whole debacle is just too much for any rational mind…
here’s a fantastic article by Matt Taibbi - [Spoiler Alert] it will make you angrier.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1
ManchuCandidate: So you’re blaming this particular guy for the failure of AIG and the global economic crisis? And you are really surprised that professionals in this country make $1 million per year? This sort of ignorance and irrational rage is something I expect at Redstate and NRO and it is really depressing to see it here.
As long as you are sucking taxpayers’ titties dry, you won’t be directing anything about how you spend your bonus. Shut your pie hole and give us the damn money.
I used to work for TJ Maxx corporate, and when someone would complain to me that the pair of undies they bought at our store had poop stains, I took that constructive criticism like a woman! Did I personally create the skid marks? No! But I listened! Cause I work hard!! And now I can feed my family with those shit stains!
Man, I can’t believe how angry I am after reading that. I mean, foaming at the mouth furious.
Um, hmm, how do I put this? Oh wait I know.
Cry me a fucking river you stupid douchebag motherfucker I hope your mistress gives you crabs on this weekend’s “business trip”, as your poor wife is too zonked on adavan and merlot to even notice you quit.
Would Dr. Drew consider this person a “narcissist”? Or just a DICK
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: this sort of baiting is gross and what I expect at Redstate and NRO and it is really depressing to see it here.
magic titty:
Everyone who lives in CT is on but ACORN bus tour - except Dodd’s.
Mustang: And please note, when this walking rectum says “work hard” it means he has to get up early and treadmill for 40 minutes so he doesn’t embarass himself by falling asleep later in the afternoon, then put on a fancy suit and shoes, then show up to work .5-1 hour earlier than his contemporaries (but not the cleaning crew), then read a bunch of shit and do some writing, then eat 2 catered meals because he has to stay past 6 PM, for the teambuilding, and because work is more fun than assuming his domestic responsibilities, and he has to answer calls sometimes from around the globe at inconvenient times, and he has to keep track of emails and whatnot…
When he finally has to gather his files in a cardboard box it will be the most effort he’s put in outside a gym in years. I’d like to know how he would have adjusted to the size of his bonus had the government simply let AIG fail and get sold off in parts. These monsters always act like we’re not supposed to be keeping track of that little nugget of information.
I will bet you $742,006 and 40 cents that he is a Paultard….
SlouchingTowardsWasilla:
No, not entirely, but he is one of them.
Do you not get it? I don’t really care what he makes (and yes, I do happen to know that some folks make a lot of money and I don’t really care.) My problem has been that when you have to take $150 BILLION in US taxpayer money, bonuses should be the last thing you should be getting.
So what do you suggest? Hold hands in a forgiveness circle? Just let it all slide? And wait for the next time these fucks screw up?
It’s a real big circle of hypocrisy. These are the folks who have for the last 30 FUCKING YEARS tell others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps when they get into trouble, DEMAND that companies to be more efficient and cut costs while doing none of the above. I’ve found in my own experience with financial companies that they tend to be the most bloated, top heavy and inefficient on a higher level than gubbiment.
SlouchingTowardsWasilla:
Uh, NRO doesn’t have comments. I’d have been trolling the fuck out of it for the past four years if it did.
Also, you honestly think derivatives trading is worth more than someone who knows exactly when to throw “a big bag of dicks” around? That’s fucking crazy, and I have a bag of smart dicks you might want to eat.
No offense, though.
Honestly (and I hate to say this here), and turning my snark down for a minute -
I bet this guy would have kept his down and kept working if, at the congressional hearings, some AIG guy, or TimmyG (”Timmy! Timmy! Timmy!”) has just said something like
“I know that there are some people still working at AIG that were not part of the credit default swaps business, and they are making an effort to be responsible stewards of the people’s money, and we shouldn’t belittle their efforts or necessarily tar them with the same brush.”
Everybody wants just a nugget of recognition. It wouldn’t have cost anybody anything. It would have taken like twelve seconds.
As a parent, I can vouch that there’s a lot more value to saying what you WANT to happen, rather than constantly berating what you perceive as faults. Just sayin’
“From the mid-sixties on it was necessary for women to enter the work force, not because they necessarily wanted to, but because they were force to [due to deficit spending because of welfare programs]. …What did this do to the family? Twenty-five million children under school age are being dumped into day care centers… There’s a lot of heady freedom to a fourteen or fifteen year old who comes home who knows that his Dada won’t be home ’till later and his mother won’t be home so he’s got his girlfriend with him and why not? I mean after all - a little grass here, a little sex there. Six hundred thousand teenage pregnancies last year - what’s happening?
“Well, the mothers aren’t home… Divorces mean children are losing their role models, they’re not identifying with the proper spouse of the proper sex. You have a rise in homosexuality. You have a rise in teenage delinquencies. You’ve got a rise in rebellion in schools” AND THE ECONOMY COLLAPSES.
DAMN FEMINISTS.
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: The company he worked for would not now exist were it not for extraordinary government intervention, yet he still writes as though he’s entitled to bonus money, and furthermore is condescending about the idea that anybody but he should determine how that money should be spent. The point is not how much “professionals” make, it’s about having grace in defeat. Plus I might point out we have no idea what his role at AIG was. On the one hand he is saying “I KNEW NOTHING” about the CDS activity, while on the other he wants us to be impressed that he was an INTEGRAL PLAYER in what was probably some other form of shenanigans. Oh well, guess it’s time for me to pack up and move on over to RED STATE.
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: That’s the beauty of America. If you’re the best at what you do - the very best - then you can make a lot of money doing it, even if it’s something silly like flashing your boobs or hitting a little white ball. I think it’s safe to say that whatever this gentleman did for AIG was not an example of the world’s best banking (if it were, we’d have known his name - Jake DeSantis). He’s not Madonna, and he’s not Tiger Woods. He’s not even Vanilla Ice or John Daly. He’s the banking equivalent of the guy jumping out of the burning Hindenburg.
SlouchingTowardsWasilla:
Yes, because it’s irrational to be infuriated that this poor, poor man is hurt — mentally anguished — by the fact that people are ANGRY at him and his company for paying him a $742,000 bonus when taxpayers are propping up his company — a company that happens to have destroyed the economy and many of their livelihoods.
That’s a bonus, btw. Not a salary. His bonus is more than my mother, for instance, will make in — let’s see, carry the one — 24 years. Of course, now it’ll probably take longer than that, because she’s lost her extra job because of cutbacks. That crazy economy, you know. Sucks to not be able to afford your utilities in Central New York in the winter.
I’m not angry at Tiger Woods because Tiger Woods didn’t rob my country blind and then have the unmitigated gall to whine that everyone is being mean to him. I don’t care how direct their involvement is, everyone who worked there should be begging to make this up to the rest of us. They should be too ashamed to show their faces, let alone write letters to the New York Times.
Dude, you haven’t seen irrational rage yet. This is still the rational rage. You don’t want to see irrational. I think it involves selling off their offspring into slave labor camps.
there’s nothing like the threat (okay, just a whiff) of class warfare to bring out the sob stories for the rich. in the words of the immortal trashman (a class conscious comic from the sixties): “the closer the bone, the sweeter the meat.”
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: Hey, my union says I’m a professional and I make waaaay less than 1,000,000. I also spent waaaay more time in getting educated and I make waaaay less than 1,000,0000. I also contribute waaaay more to the common good and I make waaay, well, you get my point. Or maybe not, is the problem.
HipHopOpotamus: Fortunately, feminism also provides a solution for those 600k teen pregnancies. Abortions for everyone!
Sussemilch: Why did you change your avatar? It was one of the bestest.
snideinplainsight: But, uh … we don’t need him to keep working. There’s massive unemployment out there, is there not?
I say in the name of all that’s good and holy, go. Go enjoy your stolen money somewhere on an island somewhere where at least you won’t do any more damage, and at least we won’t have to hear your self-righteous bitching about your “hard work.”
Just last week I opined that the first AIG exec to step up and publicly reject his bonus or donate it to charity would be hailed as a Big Damn Hero.
I failed to account for a couple of things: A. Just how angry we still are over the AIG bonuses, and 2. That the first person to step up would be a sanctimonious prick.
“… do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget.”
Did he just email this rant to a friend or was there no one in the building to tell him that this sounds a lot like he’s admitting that AIG is AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE VOID OF FAIL?
The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation.
Slouching is right. If the Tiger Woods of fucking up America’s credit-worthiness doesn’t get respect on Wonkette, THEN GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK COME ON!! THIS ISN’T RED STATE.COM
helzapoppn: Yeah, I think we as a nation are done with lionizing these idiots. I think we’re well into the yearning for public beatings stage.
Our tendency to hero worship is clashing with the inescapable realization that “HEY, THAT’S OUR DAMN MONEY!”
Tra: Tiger Woods made over $60 million in endorsements from GM.
I swear I tried to read that whole thing and it made my blood pressure go up. This ass baby thinks he deserves a bonus after he company wrecked the global economy! Screw a bag of dicks. Lock up in a cage and let him starve!
Canmon (the Inadequate): Call me when he golfs the economy to death and spits on its corpse.
magic titty: Just trying to throw a little attention at this for a day or two http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20090320/capt.photo_1237560994586-1-0.jpg
Tra: Tra, can I… like… you know.. be your friend?
C’os you’re like (seriously) super-cool.
Haha! In today’s Dlibert comic, good ol’ Dogbert actually has a conversation with the AIG guy, and coins a funny word for the type of person he is.
Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. These guys have developed such a bunker mentality that they are completely clueless about what the general population seems to be feeling.
And why the hell is the NYT publishing this drivel and giving this guy an outlet for his whiny, self-absorbed rant? Can’t he just post in the comments on political blogs like the rest of us? Damn elitist.
Maybe he could donate that seven hundred grand to some of us who lost our jobs in this recession? That will buy us a lot of hobo beans.
Dear Rich Crybaby,
The $700,000 bonus upon which you have whingetorialized is money that your company does not have.
Furthermore, your agreement to work for $1 in hopes of a big bonus from a foundering company shows that you are first class sucker.
Sussemilch: /tar self(); /icon.restore
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: I mostly agree that there is a lot of “irrational rage,” particularly as principal maestros of this disaster left a long time ago with some pretty sweet severence packages. However, I can’t shed a tear this guy. Commodity trading and equity trading (his job) serve a useful function, but it’s not quite accurate to say that AIG’s commodity and equity division had nothing to do with the present downturn. First, the commodities bubble did play a role in our current economic woes. Both the price shock of massively inflated commodities prices and the subsequent deflaction or those prices.It’s hard to feel that bad for someone who made his fortune on inflated asset futures. Would you shed a tear for me if I said that I made $20M trading Patio.com stock in 1999, and I felt cheated that I didn’t get a bonus in the end of 2000 after the dot.com bubble burst? It’s always risky to stake your future on highly volitile markets, particularly when those market seem to be rising at an inexplicable pace (bubbles). This guy hitched his wagon to some pretty nice bubbles, and he probably got paid fantastically well when the bubbles were going up, but not on the way down. It takes a lot of balls to say that his payment only reflected his hardwork. Every commodities trader made lots of money during the last few years (until the burst), because commodities prices were spinning out of control. To return to my Patio.com example, wouldn’t it sound silly if I say “my huge profits in trading dot.com stocks between 1997 and 1999 entirely reflected my work ethic,” when it really reflected my luck. It’s been my experience that lucky people are the most dead certain that they’ve been rewarded fairly and that the government shouldn’t bother them with the fate of unlucky people.
This guy’s basic argument is that he works hard so he’s entitled to a bonus? As though the overall health of the company he works for is irrelevant. Sounds like a socialist to me.
And yet he can’t understand why people think he deserves a chainsaw enema.
HARD WORK = Nightshift in the hospital cleaning up feces, urine, vomit, calming down crazy homeless people, eating my “lunch” in a dirty break room that smells like shit and being asked every five minutes to stop and help the nurse pull this guy or that guy off of the floor, watching people cry, getting yelled at by another lying ass addict, running like hell to another code, going home bone tired and sleeping til noon and waking up tired.
NOT HARD WORK = sitting in this office today making five times what I made working hard in the hospital, goofing off on Wonkette.
Everybody knows this.
God, just shut up, guy. You allege that you work really hard (I doubt it) and that you have earned your massive bonus (again, probably bullshit) even though it’s in the wake of a complete government rescue of your company.
Well, for the sake of an argument, I’ll grant that perhaps you did work super hard, and perhaps that money is what is merited. I’ll even ignore the fact that without the insanely massive government intervention, your new job title would be “Shit Stacker” or “Assistant Rat Catcher.” You know, just to be super fair to you. When we have built this tower of ‘ifs’ to base our argument on, we have this: You don’t think your pay is appropriate for the work you do? Fine. Quit your goddamn job, and see if anyone misses you. They’ll pay you a much more appropriate wage at McDonalds. And I’m sure there aren’t, like, a million people who would drop-kick their great-aunt to sit at your old desk, or anything.
I really don’t care what you do, though, if it means I won’t have to listen to any more whining from the poor souls at AIG-FP.
zhubajie: Even Better, whay doesn’t he change it all to nickels and shove them up his ass. He can have all the lube he wants.
This reminds me of something that happened a few years back on a college campus: The libs sponsored a “Give Up Your Lunch” day to raise money for the homeless. In response, the a Republican campus organization threw a big lobster lunch fest on the same day. = a complete and total lack of empathy and humanity.
At least Jim Cramer knew when to just shut up and take it.
Lascauxcaveman: Fixed.
The NY Times got rid of Kristol Meth to make room for this? God damn, that’s worse than a Tom Pornstacheman column.
Woodwards Friend: Actually, hard work has squat to do with the $742,006.40 mister cry-baby-girly-girly-man received. It’s a retention bonus, which means that would have paid it simply for showing up at AIG for a year and picking his toes.
Retention bonuses (or bone-eye, as I like to say) are bribes paid to an employee not to quit.
Gopherit:
Having seen the “Ass Pennies” skit from the The State, I must point out that your idea could backfire on us terribly.
So basically this guy agreed to take $1/yr salary now, with the expectation that at the end he’d be given 3/4 mil. Contract or no, that’s certainly a risk to take when you work at a company that is only afloat because of government intervention. His job for the last decade or whatever has been based in profiting from taking risks, but now when taking a risk has led to a (personal) loss, he doesn’t want to play anymore. Sympathy abounds…
coffeeyesplease: Buddies 4-evah! For you, I will even waive the small but entirely worthwhile registration fee.
S.Luggo: no, it’s a form of legal tax evasion. salaries are taxed at a higher rate than “bonuses”, nearly double. they work on a bonus system to avoid paying the taxes that you and i pay.
he was just following orders, he deserves so much better,… I haz a sad
KilgoreTrout_XL: Ass Pennies was Upright Citizen’s Brigade, not The State.
The whole AIG bonus is a sideshow designed to keep us worked up while “ex”-exployees of hedge funds (Goldman-Sachs esp.) run the government into the ground. Anyone notice that China wants an international currency? They hold a lot of dollars and are scared shitless about inlfation. Shit folks, we could be looking at the worst case scenario–we might have to say, “you know, those Paultards were actually right about a few things.” And we don’t want that. Our Congress is filled with cowards who would rather run over the cliff than take a leap and hope you land on the other side. Barry’s investment in the future ideas are probably the only chance we’ve got of not becoming a third world country. But hey, “look at AIG! Be mad at them! Don’t look at the deep systemic issues we’ve got.” We ought to be mad, but these fucks at AIG are only the tip of the iceberg. I’ll buy the first round of icepicks.
Mad Farmer Manifest: i can do two things at once, sometimes more.
Dammit, I’ve spent half an hour trying to craft a response to this that mediates between ire, incredulity, and invective, but everything I’ve written violates the Wonkette ideal of expressing all in a single pithy sentence.
Mad Farmer Manifest: I find your insistence that AIG bonuses are little more than a distraction very distracting
The fact that we’re still discussing these bonuses it’s beyond me.
The fact that these AIG(FP) people still have jobs they can resign from… now, that’s just insulting.
I’m computer programmer and I work for a bank (which means I’ll be unemployed soon, so if you know of anything… please, I have kids (no, I don’t :-)) and I’d be fired, on the spot, if one of my online transactional systems cost the bank a dime and no one would be surprised. These people have cost us all trillions dollars!!! And still find a way to victimize themselves out of their incompetency…. Are we really having this discussion!?!?!?
Where the lynch mobs when you need’em (but then again, I’m black so maybe that’s not such a good idea)
Mr Blifil: Then phase one of my master plan is complete. MWWAAA HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
cranky: I know that you and the rest of the Wonketters can. If we were stupid, we wouldn’t be here. I’m referring to the general population who are too busy watching American Idol do handle more than one thing at a time. But perhaps that makes me an elitist?
Tra: Dude(tte)yuu totally rock!!!!
B4L!!!!
Mr Blifil: Yes, it’s completely distracting to the real issues, such as TeLePRomTeR.
Sussemilch: Ha! That poster would be offensive if everything else wasn’t offensive as well.
I have a friend with a grad degree from MIT who has worked at Starbucks for two years. After I got my masters from Columbia, I temped and drove around the Bay Area checking to make sure gas station attendants carded for cigarettes.
I paid $60,000 for an ivy league education and all I got was a whiny AIG employee who is receiving the taxes from my unemployment check.
SlouchingTowardsWasilla: Actually, I’ll go out on a limb with Paul Krugman and say that income disparity is a problem. It’s exploded since the 60s and has a negative impact on 1) the ability of the middle class to purchase goods (Ford paid his workers well so they could buy his cars) and 2) decreases social mobility.
But you’re entitled to to believe that you’re defending a meritocracy. Worthington’s Law may assist you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF8wLg5Asgo
Chainsaw Enema. Defined.
You’re being kind of hard on poor Jake–like maybe you think he KNEW about Credit Default Swaps’n’shit.
Education
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Intern
Los Alamos National Laboratory
(Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Research industry)
1989 — 1992 (3 years)
Summers and one term during time at MIT. Conducted thesis research.
*
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
S.M., Materials Science, 1987 — 1992
Thesis “Chemical Vapor Deposition of Iridium and Rhodium from Organometallic Precursors” conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
groove: Ah yes. Those money managers did so fucking well my 401k shrank to two digits. At least the McDonalds guys might pick stocks or investments based on something rational, like how much they adore the shiny paints on the folio cover.
groove: I wouldn’t trust this guy to get my hamburger order right. This guy made his money not by having a college degree but by who he knew in college (and who his parents knew to get him into said college).
Dear AIG: Can I have asswipe’s job?
It always amazes me how often capitalists confuse “hard work” with “blind luck”
One Yield Regular: You could tell a fun story too. I like those.TricksyCoyote: Yeah, I graduated from college into a shiny new Depression too. Its like Reagan came back from the grave to kick us in the nuts isn’t it?
octupletsmom: These are the same failed douchetards that could not make the cut when Fed super-science funds were cut in the late ’70s/early ’80s. Quants and Black-Scholes have majorly clusterfucked the world economy.
By the by, the quants’ counterparts are getting ready to create a universe-annihilating black hole at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, so none of this worrying about economic issues really matters much.
P.S. DeSantis’ overinflated sense of noblesse oblige has gone galt…