[UPDATE: I'm Floored] Explosive: AIG will dispense more bonuses
By SusanUnPC on March 21, 2009 at 4:50 PM in AIG
UPDATE: Given the few comments this story has received, I guess that everyone here at No Quarter is mostly alright with AIG’s executives receiving two more rounds in millions of dollars of bonuses on July 15th and September 15th. Okay. You’re not presuming they won’t get those bonuses, are you? Or that Congress can pass an rational, constitutional law to prevent AIG execs from getting the July/September bonuses, besides the March ’09 bonuses, that the Fed and Treasury — along with the former New York Fed chair, Tim Geithner — all approved in the original 2008 AIG bail-out?
Last night, I tucked this into my article, “The Cover-Up by All The President’s Men,” — below the fold and towards the end of the post — I did so somewhat on purpose, as a test, to see how many readers would spot this astounding news:
There are more A.I.G. bonuses to come:
On Friday, [A.I.G. CEO Edward Liddy told Congress] said he could not block the bonuses; he did agree to reduce executive bonuses set for July 15 and Sept. 15.
I’m searching around to see if I can find out more about those next two sets of bonuses, but am striking out so far. Can any of you help look for more details on the bonuses in June and September 2009?
As you all know from your own experiences, it’s fun to search just because you never know what you might discover! One can stumble on a site one has never heard of before and, once in a while, that accidental encounter can turn out to be truly hot find!
Here’s a site I discovered today, and one article at the site you’ll want to read:
“Liddy Says Geithner Knew About Bonuses,” Securities Law Blog (SECLaw.com — “Issues, news and commentary on the law of the financial markets.”) Here’s an out-of-context blurb to get your interest piqued:
Morgan Stanley staff gets paid salary plus bonus. Secretaries, IT folks, internal accountants, attorneys, all get bonuses as part of their overall compensation. It is almost guaranteed that most of those folks who are married with a working spouse make over $250,000 a year, combined. It’s relatively easy, given the cost of living in a major city these days. An in-house attorney makes something on the order of $200,000. Her husband probably makes over $100,000 and BAM, they get hit with a 90% tax on her bonus, and she has absolutely nothing to do with the bank’s current problems. Some of the IT professionals make over $200,000. Same situation. There are assistants who make significant amounts of money working at these firms, who get paid with a bonus, and the government is going to tax them too at 90%.
Congress cannot possibly justify this. They have created this mess and they are now pandering to the public. AND, they are too lazy to write a bill that actually addresses what they are trying to address. While I wouldn’t agree with it, if you want to get the bonuses that were paid to executives, use the power of additional TARP funds to do it, not the tax code.
If you want to use the tax code, then apply the tax to bonuses over one million dollars. I would still have a huge problem with that, but you would not be taking money from the innocent secretary, bookkeeper and IT guy.
Don’t believe it? Read it yourself, it’s only one page long – The House Bonus Bill
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