Former AIG executive Jake DeSantis is giving his bonus back, and he wants the world to know about it. But please don't misconstrue this as an admission of culpability in the insurance giant's epic collapse. In DeSantis's resignation letter, which he had reprinted in The New York Times, the former VP makes clear that he believes many of the AIG employees being threatened by Congress and hounded by Andrew Cuomo's horrifying angry face are the good ones, who dutifully stayed behind to clean up the derivatives-based nightmare created by colleagues who cashed out long ago.
If DeSantis is correct, Congress has set a horrible precedent by giving in to populist outrage and calling for punitive taxation without even checking the facts first. What do you think -- did DeSantis take the honorable route or is he just trying to save face?
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Wednesday 25 March
By Burnsy
He makes an interesting point but... BURN THE HERETIC! BURN HIM TO THE GROUND!
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Wednesday 25 March
By Palmy
I know one of these guys, and his situation is EXACTLY what he was talking about. He was hired to help clean up the mess, he is a specialist in these things, so he was offered a compensation package that allowed him to go to a failing company AND still take care of his young family.
Imagine the talent they would get if they could only hire people willing to work for decent pay, but don't have ANY job security. How many super good businessmen don't have a family and mortgage? Not enough.
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Thursday 26 March
By Rocky
I am glad Mr. DeSantis is resigning. He doesn't even realize that he is part of the problem. If the "free" market were able to work the way Mr. DeSantis seems AIG should have gone bankrupt, contracts (including executive bonuses) would have been renegtiated by the courts, management would have been fired, and the assets would have broken up into small pieces and sold off to other companies that were better managed.
That's the free market. Not the crazy privileged workings of super large finacial services companies that write legislation for themselves and then blame the very government that they bought and paid for for the problems that they made for themselves.
PS I would pay all the executives with Credit Default Swaps at the price that the Bankers claim they are worth. That would be a good way of getting the toxic assets off the books.
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