Sunday, March 15, 2009

Generation of Swine

In case you forgot what Hunter S. Thompson meant by swine back in the day, check out A.I.G. taking $180 billion of public money and then insisting it must pay $165 million in NEW bonuses (on top of $121 million already paid out this year), and pay them to the SAME GUYS that blew AIG up with credit default swaps among other things.

This is not zero accountability, it's inverse accountability: the worse we do to you, the more you pay to us.

It's gangsterism, on top of the extortion AIG has already exterted in saying if you don't give us 180 billion while letting us still run ourselves, we'll blow up the entire world financial system.

Bonus contracts that are still enforceable today must have said - you pay us even if our current gains create losses later, even if they put the whole company in the red, even if hell freezes over and the government gives us $180 billion, even if the US taxpayers gives us all the money in the United States. You still pay us.

Plague of locusts, rain of frogs. And Swine.

Supposedly the AIG CEO has pledged to reduce these "retention payments" by 30%.

The only option of course is to publish AIG's client list and then let it die.

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