{"id":1030,"date":"2009-03-26T06:23:33","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T14:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2009-03-26T13:49:27","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T21:49:27","slug":"some-distinctions-about-the-aig-bonuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/some-distinctions-about-the-aig-bonuses\/","title":{"rendered":"Some distinctions about the AIG bonuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever a scandal involves a group, reporting about the scandal immediately erases distinctions about people within the group.\u00a0 We do the same thing with enemies<\/a> of the state (or church, or whatever).\u00a0 That’s why it’s dangerous to be part of an out of favor (or even rotten) organization, even if you’ve got nothing to hide, or had nothing to do with the rot.<\/p>\n

A purported AIG insider has released a letter that attempts to provide some relevant distinctions regarding the scandalous AIG FP bonuses:<\/p>\n

1) On October 22nd 2008 (one month after bailout) Andrew Cuomo
\nreaffirmed our right to payments under the retention plan.
\n2) On October 9th Bill Dooley, the head of financial services at AIG,
\nrestated that the treasury and AIG were committed to payments under the ERP.
\n3) AIG reduced the value of our deferred compensation to zero,
\neffectively cutting the value of the contracts under the ERP by about 30-50% depending on the amount due to each employee.
\n4) AIG wiped out the value of our previously earned deferred
\ncompensation, costing me, for example, about half my saving and many others in the company the same.
\n5) At no time did AIG ask to renegotiate the contracts or plead
\nextenuating circumstances. Many of us would have worked for much less or for nothing just to clean things up.
\n6) AIG prepaid 30% of the ERP amount in December with their hearty thanks for a job well done. The treasury knew of and had to approve this.<\/p>\n

Is it really fair of them to try to renegotiate after we have
\nperformed on our half of the contract? It would have been fair in
\nseptember during the bailout, or in october. Those were extraordinary circumstances. But is it fair of them to come to us after the end of the contract and then ask for the money back after many of us have made personal and professional sacrifices based on these contracts? I, along with many of my colleagues, have expressed a willingness to give the money to charity. But under no circumstances will we accept that we did not earn the money. Is it fair or criminal that Cuomo would threaten us with the release of our names if we don’t return the money? That is blackmail. It is a crime of the most despical nature.\u00a0 Hopefully Cuomo will meet the destiny of the last New York Attorney General to mess with AIG, Spitzer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Consumers of scandal news simply don’t have the bandwidth to make those distinctions.\u00a0 The MSM, whose own rot is carefully hidden from view, profits from blurring them in the pursuit of a good “story.”\u00a0 Distinctions undermine “the story,” which is inherently more interesting when the facts are selected and interpreted in a particular way.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, no matter how much clarity we begin to get as the details come into sharper focus, the original story is already out there.\u00a0 The people have finished it, put it down, and moved onto the next one, like the consumption of chips and dip–empty calories that never fill you up.<\/p>\n

HT:\u00a0 John Carney<\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Jake DeSantis piles the shame<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever a scandal involves a group, reporting about the scandal immediately erases distinctions about people within the group.\u00a0 We do the same thing with enemies of the state (or church, or whatever).\u00a0 That’s why it’s dangerous to be part of an out of favor (or even rotten) organization, even if you’ve got nothing to hide, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}