Comments:

1. Jan-Mark on July 11th, 2009 at 0:49:

   I overshoot you with almost 10 points. If I only owned an iPhone. I would have a near perfect score. I almost outscore you if “know how to do X” is read as “have done X”. Man I am bad.

Comments:

1. Mark on July 10th, 2009 at 13:26:

   I am just so happy to begin to see money going towards building roads here vs. blowing them up elsewhere. Re the last paragraph – my takeaway is whatever skew is there is purely coincidental and will likely level out once all the money is dispersed. I mean, it’s not even subtle. Sheesh…

2. Mudak on July 10th, 2009 at 17:38:

   … and you wonder why I consider the USA Today app for my iPhone too expensive to download and install. Yes, I know it’s free.

3. Gene on July 10th, 2009 at 19:59:

   Instead of complaining about AIG raises, what about the people that gave them the ability to give out bonuses in the first place?

   http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/13/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4863877.shtml

   Let’s place the blame where it belongs!

4. Gene on July 10th, 2009 at 20:01:

   Sorry, I meant to post the comment above on the AIG item.

5. John Sinteur on July 10th, 2009 at 20:03:

   There’s plenty of blame for everybody on this one… “Fuck you, I’ve got mine” is endemic in society, unfortunately.

Comments:

1. Maarten on July 10th, 2009 at 19:31:

   AIG is primarily an insurance company and much of its insurance business was pretty healthy. If you want to have that part of the business survive, it needs competent people–exactly the people who’ve been doing good work all along and are most likely to get offers to work elsewhere. We’re talking about $2.4mln spread over 40 employees, and the top few execs (presumably the same people who had the power to have stopped the CDO madness) have agreed to not take bonuses. Not exactly robber barron territory, is it?

2. John Sinteur on July 10th, 2009 at 19:48:

   It’s not the amount of the bonus. It’s the attitude. They know what everybody thinks of them, heck, that’s whey they went to the feds to hide this in the first place. And yet, it’s “fuck you, I’ve got mine” all over again.

3. Maarten on July 10th, 2009 at 20:24:

   What evidence do you have that they want to “hide” these payments? They may be seeking some political cover from criticism, but nothing in the article you linked suggests that it was covert.

   And who are these “they” that “know” what “everyone” thinks of them? Do you have any evidence that the people getting bonuses had anything to do with the CDS part of the business?

   Note that AIG is being run by a guy that got installed by the government after the bailout. Is he part of those “they”?

   Note also that these are not newly awarded bonuses, they are part of existing compensation packages–quite likely based on good performance in *those* parts of the business.

   Some large percentage of AIG employees are in a respectable business and had nothing to do with the CDS meltdown. In what sense are those people displaying “fuck you” attitude? If they are busting their asses helping the company survive, why should they not get reasonable compensation?

   Look, I understand the logic of saying, “The business was basically bankrupt, only the bailout kept it afloat, and so things should be austere so the tax payers don’t suffer additional costs”. But once you bail out the company, you should act to keep it healthy, and retaining the employees who are going to make it successful in the long run is a necessary part of that. They should fire everyone who had any oversight of the CDS insanity, and work to retain those who were doing a good job running the healthy parts of the company.

4. John Sinteur on July 10th, 2009 at 20:32:

   Look, I understand the logic of saying, “The business was basically bankrupt, only the bailout kept it afloat, and so things should be austere so the tax payers don’t suffer additional costs”.

   Great. Except that’s not what I’m saying at all. Here’s one of the key sentences: The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.

   AIG knows that any form of bonus program reeks like “old times”, yet they insist on doing business exactly like in the old times. AIG knows that they’re going to get lynched if these bonus programs are widely known, and try to avoid the outrage by having government bless them instead of finding another way to reward those who may, or may not, do something useful for the company. They haven’t learned a thing, especially those who may actually qualify for the pat on the back this time around – they feel they deserve the bonus (just like you feel they deserve it) regardless of the effects on what the public thinks of the company and it’s subsequent ability to operate, and they’ll do anything to get their hands on that money regardless of the effects on the image and future of the company – just as I said… “Fuck you, I’ve got mine!”

5. Maarten on July 10th, 2009 at 20:51:

   Right, public perception is truth, and the masses are always right.

   Now that the old times are over, I guess in the new times you don’t have to pay competitive salaries to retain talented employees.

   *rolls eyes*

   Sorry John, I’m not detecting any reality-based analytical thinking in your responses, just emotions.

6. John Sinteur on July 10th, 2009 at 20:56:

   you don’t have to pay competitive salaries

   Sorry, but I’m fully aware that you actually do have to do that.

   I’m just saying doing that by paying a bonus right now is not the way to go about it.

7. Maarten on July 10th, 2009 at 21:32:

   You’re just begging the question–what would be the way to go about it, then?

   Making some other form of payment would just be an actual attempt at hiding what’s going on, so I’m left to think that you’d advocate suspending the bonus payment until some conditions are met, e.g. the bailout money has been repaid.

   If that’s the case, I think you’d have a stronger blog if you said something constructive like that, rather than just, “They’re defying the public sentiment! Put ‘em up against the wall!”

8. John Sinteur on July 10th, 2009 at 21:37:

   So let me get this straight – they are the financial geniuses that deserve millions of dollars of bonus for thinking up all kind of financial wizardry, and I’ve got a weak blog because I’m not offering an alternative?

   If they really are deserving their bonus, don’t you think they should be more than capable of dealing with all this. Or do I get a million bonus just for suggesting that maybe the old-fashioned idea of giving them stock options in AIG that vest in 5 years may be more appropiate?

9. Maarten on July 10th, 2009 at 23:23:

   If “they’re really deserving their bonus”, then they’re really deserving of their bonus. Give it to ‘em.

   But isn’t your position that they’re fuck-you money-grabbing robber barons? And yet they should be “capable of dealing with this” and figure out a fair compensation for themselves? Isn’t that how we got here?

   No wait, I see now. If they were deserving of their bonus, they would be capable of dealing with this, but you’re outraged, which indicates they screwed it up, so they don’t deserve the bonus after all. Q.E.D.

   OK, that clears it up.

   (P.S.: Their compensation was already, all along, even before the crisis, structured to be heavily invested in AIG: “[they are/were] required to defer about half of their pay for years, and intertwine their long-term interests with their firm’s”. [source])

   P.P.S: That guy in the article who got AIG to stop making the bad deals back in 2005, does *he* deserve a bonus?

10. John Sinteur on July 11th, 2009 at 6:56:

    We keep talking past each other. You keep asking whether or not they deserve it, I’m talking about the how and the timing. Two different things.

11. Maarten on July 11th, 2009 at 19:06:

    So basically you’re talking about the PR spin?

12. John Sinteur on July 11th, 2009 at 19:16:

    If you want to be cynical about it, then yes, I guess I am. I was more thinking of a “not now, not this way”

13. Maarten on July 11th, 2009 at 19:56:

    What’s funny to me is that you accused them of hiding this, when in fact you’d prefer that they hide it better–by stuffing it into the future or using fancy mechanisms.

    I think you have the attitude that if some employees don’t want to wait 5 years for their previously contractually agreed income (or give it up altogether), they can just quit (or sue?), and there’ll be someone else equally competent to take over for them. The big question is whether that’s actually true.

    I come back to the pragmatic question: we, the U.S. tax payers, have bailed out AIG and it’s now in our best interest to improve the performance of the company. If that means paying some of these bonuses, then fine. If that’s unpalatable to the general public, then this is one of those times where leaders need to lead and explain why they’re doing something non-obvious, rather than letting the mob sentiment steer them.

    A clarification: it’s not entirely clear to me that the bonuses should actually be paid; that depends a fair bit on the exact who and why. Rather, I can see that there might be a thoughtful case to be made to do so.

14. John Sinteur on July 11th, 2009 at 19:59:

    Now that I can agree on. That’s also basically the “not this way” part I was hoping for.

Comments:

1. Roland Hesz on July 10th, 2009 at 9:15:

   Yes, but who designed physics? It must have been designed, see, as it works so well, it could not happen all by itself! Why it even can create life at the slightest provocation!!

2. John Domingue on July 12th, 2009 at 4:12:

   Why must there be a “who”? How about a “what”? How about something that passes human understanding? Because the universe produced humanity that means the root cause must be like us? This arrogance may be genetically programmed in; still, now there’s awareness that can scan in all directions including the direction it came from.

3. florian mosleh on July 12th, 2009 at 7:26:

   F S M

   we are all noodled into existence by the forces he hath wrought.