From NYT:

The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.
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Word of the bonuses last week stirred such deep consternation inside the Obama administration that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the firm they were unacceptable and demanded they be renegotiated, a senior administration official said. But the bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.

The payments to A.I.G.’s financial products unit are in addition to $121 million in previously scheduled bonuses for the company’s senior executives and 6,400 employees across the sprawling corporation. Mr. Geithner last week pressured A.I.G. to cut the $9.6 million going to the top 50 executives in half and tie the rest to performance.

It’s 100% certain from this news item that Wall Street - and particularly AIG - doesn’t give a shit about any of us - shareholders, taxpayers, Americans or, for that matter, our government.

In the midst of an economic crisis that rivals the great depression, what is of primary importance to this company is honoring the contracts of hundreds of vice presidents, stock brokers and money managers who have proven themselves incompetent at their jobs.

It must be nice to have a position where nothing short of destroying the world will deprive you of your million dollar bonus. If I knew, when I was a teenager, that the best jobs out there were the ones where you can produce nothing, gamble with United States money, show a failure in profit for it and then become a millionaire doing so - I would still have condemned the practice but possibly considered it if it were LEGAL - which it is.

Everyone - and I mean everyone - who participated in this grand theft of this country’s future is at fault. Actually, more than at fault. They are the poster-people for indifference. When they eventually meet their maker - if they even believe in that - it is my hope that our God takes into consideration the pain, death and disruption they have created. For every master of the universe who put 10 million dollars in on a short sell and won or lost that money, there are millions of honest Americans who’ve trusted their 401k’s or their brokers and found that investment destroyed by these short-sighted children.

I sincerely hope every one of these people get what’s coming to them. It is no longer a time where your actions are devoid of consequences. You’ve destroyed this country. You’ve left millions destitute. Due to the financial earthquake you’ve created, you’ve kept thousands or more from getting treatment that could save them or make their lives more comfortable because of them not being able to afford it anymore. All of this the result of your greed and self-absorption.

You are the evil that we’ve tried to avoid. Not al qaeda. They hurt us for one day. You’ve hurt us for a generation. Assholes.

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