AIGers Play World's Tiniest Violins to Ward Off Angry Hordes
The AIG failure-bonus recipients are on a campaign to push back against the pitchfork-wielding hordes who want them to give the money back, and they make no sense.
Jake DeSantis broke the dam with a nauseatingly self-serving New York Times op-ed Wednesday (for which, by the way, the Times confirms he was not paid). Then emboldened AIG execs in London called the cops on Andrew Cuomo and the Security Traders Association of New York wrote an error-ridden letter to Congress (cc'd to "Barak Obama"!) arguing that taxes are bad, even on AIG bonuses.
Now comes "FlyYak," the wife of an AIG IT executive who worked in London, writing on her LiveJournal page: "[O]ur government betrayed us, painted us as thieves and threw our co-workers in Connecticut to the mob." FLyYak, whom Business Insider believes to be Jan Ellen Harriman, wife of Banque AIG executive director Paul Harriman, spins a sad, sad tale of life in a "very pretty velvet lined cage with a megalomaniac"—that would be AIG Financial Products division chief Joseph Cassano—"holding the key."
Sent to London on a 2 to 3 year commitment, half a house left in storage in CT, we have been here 'indefinitely' for 11 years pushing 12. We were unable to press for anything more than the ex-pat package we were given at the beginning and lost even housing support after the first 5 years.
Our housing costs rose to 5 times what we paid in Connecticut. The salary did not.Raises were only given in the 'bonus'. So imagine having to pay 5 times your mortgage or rent on your current salary with the promise of the rest of your compensation to come once a year, in December. How do you leave that job?
Do you leave in December and disrupt your children's education? Well, not without a very good reason.
Do you leave at the end of the school year and essentially throw away 6 months of under compensated work? Not likely.
Another LiveJournal AIG scribbler in London, who goes by the name EdisonRex, makes the same complaint:
In the financial industry, generally there is a nominal salary paid, and then a bonus. The salary never changes - mine stayed the same for 15 years. Worse, being an expat, I was paid in dollars - taxed at UK rates (40%), and subject to FX rate fluctuations that have ranged from $1.60 to the pound in 1998 to $2.10 for a while in late 2007. It did not help us to save much money against the eventuality of losing the job and then being stuck in a foreign country with a toxic CV. The bonus was what got us through the year, though, and through careful budgeting, we were able to stay afloat. We didn't make all that much money, especially for London, and especially as an expatriate. Our house in Fairfield Country cost us $2100 in mortgage payments in a month, which meant we could live off the salary. The smaller house we have in London, as far out as we can live without being too far from my son's school, is around $10,000 a month, and utilities and taxes cost another $1800 a month. My son's school is about $30,000 a year. He cannot actually go to any others, he has to go there.
Here are the basic complaints, and why they are desperate and stupid:
1. Andrew Cuomo is extorting us! He's holding a gun to our head! If we don't give back the bonuses, he will release our names and we will be at the mercy of the horde!
Actually, three AIG execs were named by the New York Post earlier this month. At least two of them have since returned their bonuses. So the damage—the release of their names—had been done, but they gave the money back anyway. Clearly they weren't extorted by Andrew Cuomo. It wasn't him they were afraid of so much as the hordes themselves, who might have gone nuts if they'd kept the money. It's actually a healthy social dynamic called shame, and sometimes it overcomes even the need to send your son to a $30,000 a year school. Also, that bonus money is currently sitting in your bank account. You're just mad we're mad about that.
2. We were promised that money! We stayed at our jobs, which we would have otherwise quit!
An understandable complaint, but it doesn't go very far seeing as how, absent the bonuses, you are in exactly the same position you would have otherwise been in except you've had a job for the past year, which is more than 8 percent of Americans can say, thanks to you.
3. The bonuses were really our salary! We were paid a nominal salary throughout the year and then a big payout before Christmas!
Geez, sounds risky. What kind of moron would work on a compensation schedule like that? Oh, you would! I guess it really sucked when the company had a bad year or something, like losing $180 billion, and the bonuses evaporated.
4. We were innocent bystanders! It was all Joseph Cassano!
Yes, that does suck. But, generally speaking, the employees of bankrupt companies are always innocent bystanders who suffer for mistakes made by the people who ran the place into the ground. You should be treated differently why?
5. You can't pass a punitive, retroactive tax on us! It's not fair!
We wouldn't have had to tax you if you'd have given back the bonuses. Ha!
6. We worked really, really hard at AIG! It was hard to work there! Our jobs sucked!
You didn't work hard enough. My job sucks, too.
7. How am I going to pay for my house in London and my house in Connecticut without that bonus?
Fuck you.