See, unlike most of the incensed public and the politicians, I can see both sides of this issue. But before we get to all of that, for every time you hear a politician say "this is so terrible", tell him (or her) to shut up. Why are the politicians wringing their hands? Because you're angry.* Oh, and they don't want you to remember that they're the morons who took money from AIG to void the very laws that prevented the INSANELY, UNIMAGINABLY, IRREVOCABLY STUPID practices that left AIG in this mess right now.
So, after you tell your worthless shill of a politician to shut his fat pie-hole, what then? Well, first off, you should probably not send death threats to AIG, as much as you might like to emulate Iowa's Senator Chuck Grassley in suggesting that the current crop of AIG execs kill themselves.**
Second, think about the actual employees at AIG, not the managers. And think about people like me, who were given a sheet of paper telling them "this is the money you're going to make next year" and then had it ripped from their hands and told "yeah, that was a lie." Do you really want to be encouraging a situation where the government can excuse employers from paying contractually agreed-upon raises, bonuses and other financial rewards. "But it's millions of dollars paid to a select few people," you say. It's the principle that's the thing, you twit. Because somewhere at AIG, some dumb schmuck is having $2000 ripped out of his hands to make happy some now-insane potential voter who's been watching 24-hour news since he got laid off three months ago.*** And that guy should get his raise, because he's the one who actually made the profitable divisions worth having and he's not gotten a damned bit of credit.
*And justifiably so... I find it rather peculiar that the employees whose decisions rendered AIG into its current model as a prosaic beacon of idiocy merit millions of dollars in retention policies. Had I any say in the matter at all, those people would be fired before they had a chance to contemplate negotiatating being retained. I should figure out a way to negotiate a retention contract for myself.
**And if you don't, what in the world are you doing reading my blog? Seriously,before you even began reading this, you knew good and well that's the sort of sentiment I would espouse. In fact, had I the money, I'd send some ceremonial suicide swords to AIG's Executive Offices and careful instructions on how to kill one's self with maximum face-saving effectiveness.
***Was he insane before-hand? Who knows. All I know is that if he's been watching 24-hour Cable News round-the-clock for the last three months, he's go the IQ of a rabid chipmunk coming down off an all-day bender of huffing paint-thinner
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at March 18, 2009 11:12 PM | TrackBack