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Bottom line, David, is the executives of AIG could not have met any profitable goals or they would not have had the government to bail their sorry butts out of financial ruins. Therefore, any bonuses paid did not come from company profits but rather from the taxpayers. Do you know any taxpayer who contracted with AIG to pay them bonuses? Besides, any contract is negotiable, if the owners, the ones with the bucks, deems it to be so. If the employees do not want to accept the renegotiated contract, they can leave the employment of said company, voluntarily or otherwise. Employees generally do not call the shots, the owners do.

I feel, as a taxpayer, I am under no obligation to give a bonus to anyone who failed in their responsibilities, then asks for me and millions of other taxpayers to give them money.

Under that same argument Yvonne, does the taxpayer get to walk into a casino and demand that the dealer show his hole card?

I agree, Yvonne.

Sure there is lots of cheatin' ... but afaik, Molene, casino's are a highly regulated industry, so in a general sense, yep: the taxpayer gets to see all the cards - face-down or otherwise.

You're a fake?

"Do you know any taxpayer who contracted with AIG to pay them bonuses?"

Senator Christopher Dodd. (assuming he has paid his taxes)

Yvonne : "Do you know any taxpayer who contracted with AIG to pay them bonuses? "

Yes, all of us via the morons in DC who bailed 'em out. ( You gave them your proxy vote last November)

As I understand the bonus' were for remaining with the company , not anything to do with good business or profits.

Just maybe, if the clowns that voted for these bailouts had bothered to read any of it, they might have been aware.
You also said:
" Employees generally do not call the shots, the owners do."
Is this pre or post "card check"?

All this "Bailout crap" was a stupid idea under Bush and an equally stupid idea under the current clowns!

Bailing AIG out was probably a bad idea. The idea of paying bonuses to managers who ran their companies into the ground is ludicrous.

Any contract can be voided if the terms are unconscionable. It's a common law concept that judges are loathe to enforce unless absolutely necessary, to preserve the power of contracts.

Signing a contract that patently favors one party to the obvious disadvantage of the other is unconscionable. For example, if a company contracts to buy land from a private individual, and the contract stipulates that the seller will pay property tax for the entire year, and two years past that, that's unconscionable even if the seller were aware of the clause and agreed to it.

Had this ended up in court, these "binding contracts," would have been voided judges sensitive to the public mood as unconscionable. Congress didn't want that to happen, so they passed a quick law "taxing" the bonsues as a "shut up" to angry citizens, and a "see, we're doing something."

Mr. Briscoe is right that Congress would not have said a word about the bonuses had word of them not gotten out.

Yard Dog: Employees negotiate with owners over pay and working conditions, not how the company is run or what its goals are. You are comparing apples with oranges.

UAW has a right to be upset about the Big Three pressing them on health benefits and pensions. The Big Three raided UAW benefits, and the union just wants to get back money they are owed. The unions have been very giving in the interest of preserving member jobs while management continues to live the high life. I don't blame the UAW for digging in its heels at this point. It's time for the investors to make sacrifices to keep these companies going, and they don't want to live with the fact investing has risks. They just want the worker to sacrifice so they don't have to live with risk.

"As I understand the bonus' were for remaining with the company"

Seems 15% of the employees (11 of 73) didn't get the message, but they did get the money.

From a former AIG employee's perspective:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?_r=1

"Any contract can be voided if the terms are unconscionable."

Like a spending bill with 8000 earmarks signed by a president who promised to end earmarks?

The AIG "bonusgate" has worked masterfully for Obama & Co. Play the class warfare card and gin up anger amongst the uniformed masses over $165 million, meanwhile waste billions of taxpayer dollars while their heads are turned.

The classic line: "The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation."

Which means .. if I'm in a job through which cash-on-paper flows, I get a share of that cash - no-one can do my job for less. If instead you are in a position that doesn't meet that criteria, then you get paid the least I can give you - if someone else wants to do it for less (a Chinee for example), that's just the way it is.

and btw - we'll reserve the option to renegrotiate our deal with you, but Mine is set in stone by "contract".

Dan: thanks for the link. Interesting.

But as for when you said, "Like a spending bill with 8000 earmarks signed by a president who promised to end earmarks?

The AIG "bonusgate" has worked masterfully for Obama & Co. Play the class warfare card and gin up anger amongst the uniformed masses over $165 million, meanwhile waste billions of taxpayer dollars while their heads are turned."

A legal contract, and legislation are NOT the same thing. You are comparing apples to oranges.

The spending bill was worked out before Obama came into office. I agree he should have put up a fight over the earmarks. He decided not to reinvent the wheel when the country was in crisis and money needed to flow into the pipeline.

No matter what his true motives were, I think he made a mistake, but time will tell.

I also agree that the fuss over the AIG bonuses overshadowed the true amount of waste going into bailing out the financial sector. The impotence of the government in cleaning house is appalling.

If you need to bailout the financial sector, fine. But every single executive in every bailed out company should have been fired on the spot, and junior executives promoted to take over with the understanding if the way they did business didn't change, they'd be fired too.

Why is it Andrew Cuomo is the only one undertaking any criminal investigations of what Wall Street was up to?

"A legal contract, and legislation are NOT the same thing. "

Agreed, under a legal contract two parties mutually agree on something. Under this particular legislation a majority group of money grubbing politicians agree to confiscate my money, my kids money (they are minors) and my unborn grandkids money to waste it on their projects.

We agree that he should have put up a fight over the earmarks and the the AIG bonuses overshadowed the true amount of waste. Thanks.