huffingtonpost.com — Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who read from the contracts in question at a hearing of a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, suggested AIG executives structured the contracts in such a way in anticipation of dramatic losses.
Mar 18, 2009 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountMar 19, 2009
Projection, thy name is Bagos.
thespiffMar 19, 2009
Yes, the contracts are retarded. But they are not illegal. There is nothing illegal about a business which dooms itself to fail. The government wants to blame AIG for this, but the reality is that we wouldn't be here if AIG wasn't "too big to fail", and AIG is only "too big to fail" because the government failed to regulate. Frank is doing a great job of misdirection with this AIG nonsense.
bagos1Mar 19, 2009
Oh guess what ....Fanny and Freddie execs get to keep their bonuses....so the little piggie gets to keep his buddies happy.Unbelievable. I just bet that makes you Barney supporters so proud.
Closed AccountMar 19, 2009
That's exactly the point. This crisis didn't just happen. The execs at these companies had to know for months if not years that they were headed for disaster. They also knew that if they went to the government for help, especially with a new Democratic administration, they would never be allowed to loot the company at the level that they desired. So, with full knowledge that the company was about to collapse, they wrote these "contracts" to assure that the top execs would still get paid no matter what.If that's what happened, it's a clear case of fraud. At the very least, there needs to be an investigation of ALL executive pay packages negotiated over the past year.
thespiffMar 19, 2009
What you're suggesting is if a company hires me to work for them at a salary of 60K, and it later comes out that they could only afford to pay me 30K, that somehow I am committing fraud. It doesn't matter if I knew up front that they could only pay me 30K. The company drew up the contract, it is their obligation to pay me. If the company goes under, it is certainly not MY fault that they went under because they couldn't pay me the salary they promised me.You are mixing up roles and responsibilities here.