Wall street and AIG stick their grubby hands in our pockets again.
From Huffington Post:
After its bonus payments ignited a firestorm of criticism earlier this year, American International Group Inc. is asking the federal government to weigh in on the insurer’s plan to resume paying millions in promised retention incentives next week, according to media reports.
AIG, once the world’s largest insurer, has asked the Obama administration’s compensation czar, Kenneth R. Feinberg, to approve the payments in order to head off any public outrage, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.
The budget of my company’s clients have been cut in half due to the economy. We’re just hanging on, really, in hopes that things will bet better by the end of the year. Most people are in the same boat, well, except for Taylor Swift who seems to be doing very well.
Meanwhile, you have these shitbirds at AIG arriving at the rationale that they must pay millions out, once again in less than a year, to these pigs who:
a) can’t get by on half a million or more,
b) have so many offers from other tainted financial institutions that they can string along their current company for more of OUR money,
c) are simply the vessel to which companies like AIG continue to play loose and fast with other people’s money and align their own pockets, or
d) have compromising photos of all the top executives at this firm and can bribe them for whatever they want.
One of my old bosses was a guy who made it big as a commercial director many years back (he is now gone) and was driven EVERYWHERE around Manhattan because he no longer had a license nor did he need one. It was the first time I heard someone utter the phrase, “Once you step into the limo, you never step out.” The difference with this man is he actually worked his way into his position, arrogant as he was.
These paper pushers at AIG are speculators - bad one’s at that - and the failure of that company is incentive enough for NO ONE there to receive one cent more than their previous salary (if that).
I am so fucking sick and tired of these companies insulting my intelligence with this bullshit about how their “best and brightest” will fly the coop if they don’t plop down another million or more in front of them to keep them on. Here’s a word of advice: YOU DON’T HAVE ANY BEST AND BRIGHTEST! THEY ARE WITH THE FIRMS THAT DON’T NEED TAXPAYER BAILOUT MONEY! Your best and brightest are responsible for this mess, and this culture of throwing six to seven figures around like it’s monopoly money is an insult TO EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN WHO REALLY WORKS!
My wife and I live in New York. We make a combined salary of 185,000. We consider ourselves pretty lucky and relatively well-off, even though the national consensus is that we are simply middle class here in New York. Well, let me tell you something. We still take vacations. We still save for our kid’s college education. We still pay all of our bills without worrying (partly because we bought a house we could afford and not a McMansion we couldn’t to show off), we save for retirement and life is not tough - so this suggestion that these fuckheads can’t get by on their base salary (which could be anywhere from $150,000 to $650,000) is a big, steaming pile of crap.
Money is not money to these people. It’s poker chip. Status. A way to measure their shallow lives against that of the broker friend in the next cubicle who just got a summer home in Nantucket and asks you where you’re taking your summer?
The rest of us are paying our taxes and that money is finding it’s way into these people’s pockets - and mind you, they don’t appreciate the weight of that. All that matters to them is that they are getting as much as Jimmy over at Goldman Sachs because they can’t afford that new Lotus unless they do.
I’ll never fault someone who really earns their money, but most of these shitheads don’t. They do menial jobs that anywhere else would be considered middle management - and they’re fleecing us for all we have as we struggle to work through this year. Dicks.
Being the type of person who works hard for a living and makes a wage comparable to the work I do, it has always been grotesque to me the kind of compensation those in the financial industry receive as a standard of business. It’s one thing if those making these enormous amounts were the greatest sales people in the world or created something innovative and unique, but most of them are run-of-the-mill employees and sales people who couldn’t sell water to a fish if they really had to.
