Friday, November 14, 2008

Me Pot. You Kettle. You Black.


Harry Reid's Mad at AIG, But Let's Do a Little Substituting Here...
No, we're not big fans of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), perhaps the biggets milquetoast fairies in the Senate, but we're not particularly attacking him this post. He's just the one who said it. Reid had a press conference where he viewed his displeasure with the word that AIG is planning on paying out almost $500 million to it's executives for employee retention. We don't know how many employees this package would be spread out over - ten? five thousand? More? It's all dependent.....

Here's the little bit of irony that Reid had to say about it.........



“As ordinary families struggle to make ends meet in this dramatic economic crisis, AIG’s management nevertheless asks that taxpayer dollars subsidize the firm’s employee-retention plan,” Reid stated. “The $500 million plan would benefit the very AIG executives who led the firm to the brink of collapse. To reward executives with exorbitant paydays after poor performance, and to do so even indirectly with taxpayer dollars, strikes most Americans as fundamentally unfair and a misuse of their money.”
Now, here's the game we want you to play... Take every place that Reid used the words 'AIG', 'Management' or 'Executives', and substitute 'Congress'..... It says basically the same thing, but it does ring true itself as well, don't you think? Notice, we did not say "Democrats' or 'Republicans', just Congress.......
Poor Performance. Outrage. Rewarding those who brought us to the brink of collapse. Subsidizing bad plans. Misuse of taxpayers' money. They to sit on The Hill and pass judgement at everyone else, but Reid and all of Congress need to understand that we are NOT STUPID. We know that they played a part in this mess as well, and we will not be very forgiving in the next few years if they don't fix it......
.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am sorry, but "employee retention" is an absolutely ridiculous excuse. Employees of companies like this aren't jumping ship. Most are praying for their jobs. Additionally, they need to do some cleaning house, AIG has been run into the ground.

$85B wasn't enough? They need more and they are spending money on junkets and associate retention progams? Meanwhile, Wells and BofA are halting nearly all travel and cutting every expense to try and avoid lay-offs.

What happened to the oversight that was promised? Maybe AIG was exempt since they got their money prior to the bailout.

Sorry...bailing out big companies peeves me like no other.

Thoroughbred 401k said...

Ande, I have no beef with the complaint. Everyone is mad at what is going on, and some companies still don't get it.

If these are guys getting golden parachutes, that is a problem. If these are standard commission bonuses, then that's another story, although it doesn't sound like it.


The main point of the post was hearing Reid's anger aired in a way that I felt could be directed just as much at himself...

Anonymous said...

I want a bailout

Thoroughbred 401k said...

No problem, there will be a codicile in the new Stimulus that gives Graham Slough independent nation status - like Hong Kong.