My Quick Thoughts On AIG

Topic(s): me,government,politics
2009-03-19 01:05:08 US/Pacific

So I stopped at a donut shop on my way in to work this morning. The place was very quiet. No customers. No employees at the counter. An older lady poked her head out from the kitchen area and said hello. She asked what I wanted as she walked to the front counter.

"I'll have two chocolate covered donuts and this chocolate milk," holding the Milk Chug at eye level above the counter. As she rang it up on the register, I asked how she was doing.

"Not too well," she said. "Business is slow, I can't pay the bills, and now taxes are going up."

And I'm thinking, if there is one industry that's too important to let fail, it's got to be the donut industry.

I'm only half joking about that. I don't understand why the financial industry is the only industry too important to let fail. What about the education industry? The education sector has budget shortfalls not just in 2009, but during every year. Why can't the government create a few tens of millions of dollars to solve those problems? Tens of millions is almost nothing compared to trillions, after all.

I also have some opinions about the executive bonuses at AIG.

1. AIG should never have gotten a bailout in the first place.
2. AIG should have failed in September, and all of its employees thereby immediately terminated, executives included.
3. Because AIG received a bailout, AIG's executives deserve their bonuses as per their contracts and they should be allowed to keep 100% of their bonuses.
4. The real fools in all this are our representatives in D.C. who authorized the bailout of AIG, with or without stipulations, but especially without stipulations.
5. Taxing AIG's executives because the government does not agree with the decisions of the company is at best government coercion, but is more like government fascism.

I think a lot of people will disagree with point number three. Let me explain. It disgusts me that AIG's incompetent executives would accept bonuses for the incompetent business decisions that led to the seemingly inevitable implosion of AIG. But the company didn't implode. AIG's executives somehow negotiated with a third party to give them billions and billions of dollars. That the third party spends my and your tax dollars isn't their fault.

So maybe AIG's executives aren't incompetent. Maybe they're sly businessmen and businesswomen. Whichever it is, I wish they could teach the executives at my company how to pull the trick off so well. I mean, if the government is handing out trillions and trillions of dollars, it might as well be my company getting some of that.

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