Quote:
Originally Posted by KSig RC
The money DOES belong to AIG. We gave it to them. It's theirs, not the American people's, no matter how nice that sounds on conservative talk radio or Keith Olbermann outrage footage.
No money was stolen.
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I don't listen to talk radio or experience Olbermann in any form, so I have no idea what's being said there.
There was a time pre-bailout that the money was the American taxpayers' (at least on some theoretically level), and it's pretty outrageous that government officials thought that the way to keep AIG from failing was simply to give them money with absolutely no stipulations about what it would be spent on. What reasonable person thinks like this: "hey, AIG, you demonstrated horrible judgment about how to successfully run your business; here's $144 billion with no strings attached to give you another shot."
As far as anger being directed at AIG employees, again, I'm not watching or listening to the nuts making death threats and sure, everyone didn't participate in the bad decision making at AIG. Generally speaking though, I'm not sure the rest of us are guaranteed that our salaries will remain unaffected by bad decision making by the people we work for. I'm not really angry at the average AIG employee who got a bonus, but I don't accept this idea that they were entitled to the bonus money and there was nothing that could be done. If you're working for a business on the brink of going under, you should probably HAVE to make concessions to try to ensure that the company won't fail. The common interest in renegotiating should have been saving the company, and if the employees don't have any interest in that, why should the rest of us?