Fairfield, Conn. – A busload of activists representing working- and middle-class families paid visits Saturday to the lavish homes of American International Group executives to protest the tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded by the struggling insurance company after it received a massive federal bailout.
About 40 protesters – outnumbered by reporters and photographers from as far away as Germany – sought to urge AIG executives who received a portion of the $165 million in bonuses to do more to help families.
News of the bonuses last week ignited a firestorm of controversy and even death threats against AIG employees. The company, which is based in New York, has received $182.5 billion in federal aid and now is about 80 percent government-owned, while the national housing and job markets have collapsed as the country spirals into a crippling recession.
American International Group Inc. has said it was contractually obligated to give the retention bonuses, payments designed to keep valued employees from quitting, to people in its financial products unit, based in Wilton, Conn. Congress began action on a bill that would tax 90 percent of the bonuses, and the company’s chief executive urged anyone who received more than $100,000 to return at least half.
AIG has argued that retention bonuses are crucial to pulling the company out of its crisis. Without the bonuses, the company says, top employees who best understand AIG’s business would leave.
The protests came amid new questions about the retention bonuses. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Saturday that documents turned over to his office by AIG appear to show that the company paid $53 million more in bonuses to its financial products division than previously reported.
Bonuses were “showered like confetti” on AIG employees, Blumenthal said.
An AIG spokesman declined to comment.
AIG had previously disclosed that the company was contractually obligated to pay a total of about $165 million of previously awarded retention pay to employees in the financial products unit by March 15. It said another $55 million in retention pay already had been distributed to about 400 AIG Financial Products employees.
That total of $220 million is about $2 million more than the figure disclosed Friday to Blumenthal’s office, and Blumenthal said he’s seeking clarification from the company on whether the new papers differ from what was previously reported.
“Unless the number can be explained,” he said, “it will undercut any lingering rationale the company may have for these unjustified payments.”
(Source: Associated Press)
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3 Responses
Truman said ‘the buck stops here.’
Obama says, ‘No, it keeps on going to my buddies in big business!’
Instead of people getting whipped into a frenzy against private citizens, they should wake up and be whipped into a frenzy against the govt, specifically people like Obama, Barney Frank, Dodd, and all the left wing socialists who have come together to ruin the country in such a short amount of time.
This has happened bwfore. The question now is, do we recognize this as history CHV repeeating itself & what do we or can we do about it???
these activists should be lobbying the government not AIG. AIG executives are merely doing what they estimate will be good for their business. The government took taxpayer’s money and gave it to AIG and told them to blow it any way they want.
All we need is a simple everyday businessman to run this government. Any simple everyday businessman knows not to do such a thing.