AIG’s Liddy responds to Political Fix
Edward Liddy
WASHINGTON — Yesterday, Rep. William L. Clay, D-St. Louis, offered to pose a question or two from Political Fix readers when he got his turn today to question American International Group CEO Edward Liddy in Clay’s House Financial Services subcommittee today.
Some who responded to Clay’s offer on Political Fix used the occasion for partisan attacks on the Obama administration and Clay (even though Clay voted against the financial bailout last October.)
A few folks on Fix posed good questions, among them a fellow who signed off with the name Geno.
Early this evening in Washington, after a long day of committee members giving Liddy the third degree about all the bonuses awarded AIG employees, Clay’s turn came around. So did Geno’s.
“I represent St. Louis and my daily paper is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,” Clay began. “They run a political blog, and Geno writes on that blog:
“‘How can AIG defend bonuses given to people that have run the company into the ground? Every place I have worked, bonuses are given to people who make money for the company. As far as retaining good help, you have really missed the boat!’
It was a question on the minds of many people, one that Liddy had attempted to answer in various ways today. He began by trying to explain that the $200 million or so awarded more than 400 AIG executives were “retention bonuses” rather than performance bonuses, meaning that they were given to lure people to AIG or keep them there. (Some left anyway.)
“I would say to Geno that if we really want to maintain a fighting chance to repay the American taxpayer, we have to wind down the $1.6 trillion book (bad investments exposure) … We can do that more securely and more quickly with the people we have. If we keep those people, we have a higher probability of running the book down and not costing the American taxpayers more,” Liddy said.
Translation: Liddy was saying that they needed to pay all those bonuses to keep people sharp enough to figure out how to get the company out from under a whole lot of liability from terrible financial dealings.
Got that, Geno?
I am absolutely shocked Lacy didn’t use mine. Well, I guess I will have to hope for redistricting.
Why should you keep someone who has proven to be incompentant?
As best I can tell, the people who got the bonuses didnt make up the dcs (default credit swaps), they just sold them. As I understand, AIG didnt invent dcs’s. Not sure who did. Lots of people sold them. Didnt they go bad because of the mortgages that were wrongly sold by banks? That wasnt AIG, they just repackaged the mortgages, maybe didnt even know the circumstances and details of their sale. It seems wrong to punish these people or scapegoat AIG any more than the rest of the players without facts to back that up. I’m not smart enough to have all those facts, and as best I can tell, neither are the people on this blog, nor most of the people in Washington, either. If those people stayed at the troubled company because of a promise of compensation, and at risk that they might not get them if the company went under, and when there were other safer opportunities they could have gone to, and if their staying helped AIG say afloat long enough to get taxpayer help so that international markets didnt crash and bring the whole world down the toilet with them, I think we should keep AIG’s word to those people and not scapegoat them for the whole economic mess we’re in. I know but for the bailout, these people wouldnt have jobs let alone bonuses, and if we had it to do over, we’d do it differently. Someone ask Senator Dodd why he took the cap on bonuses out of the bill in committee. Maybe Dodd should pay the bonuses out of his own pocket. I guess that makes me the only person in america who thinks they are owed part or all of their bonuses, and we should pay them (less than 1/10% of the bailout funds to AIG), but that doesnt make me wrong, just honest and not a pandering demogogic grandstanding front-running ho like some. Just saying.
I agree with you. Today’s waterbording of Ed Liddy was conducted by pompous, posturing politicians who probably couldn’t run a newspaper stand at a profit. It’s disgusting, it’s a distraction from the culpability of holier-than-thou jerks in congress (you know who), and an extreme disservice to a very qualified man, proven management reputation, who stepped help the US. Shame on them, and shame on us for tolerating their phony antics now, when they all knew what was in the mill months ago!
Liddy, who formerly ran Allstate is working for a dollar a year to clean it up. He has a lot more patience tham me. I would have told them whose fault it really is. I can’t wait to hear from Dodd tomorrow.
Senator Dodd: resign or commit suicide
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Add the d-bag Congressman from Massachusetts to the list of those who should quit or commit suicide.
Retention bonuses were paid to employees that had already left AIG. ??
what was AIG retaining? Those that took Bonuses and then left should definitely return the money.
Giving hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to the same executives that screwed things up badly, with a hope to retain them as they are the only ones who can maybe figure out what the hell they did wrong and correct it, is like the posse capturing the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, notorious bank robbers, giving them their horses and canteens, the rest of the banks money they did not steal in the first place, a promise not to pursue or investigate further….in hopes the gang will be able to located and return the money they stole. After the gang goes back into the hole with the bonus money, the posse turns around and walks home through the dessert without food or water.
What disgusts me more than AIG and their likes is the grandstanding and supposed outrage of our congressional leaders. This is the same group of people that has cozied up to these corporate entities for years and now all of a sudden they’re outraged because it’s in vogue to be a populist. lol
Lacy Clay was too dumb to come up with his own line of questioning so he resorted to an anonymous blogger.
Brilliant!!