Amerykah has turned a corner and we should all turn with it. I have thoughts ideas and suggestions but I also have patience and desire for us to be whole and one. I have been speaking a lot lately of the human condition and the generations of Black Americans. i will entertain any and all conversation as long as we can be respectful and grown up. Let the healing begin......
Showing posts with label executive bonuses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label executive bonuses. Show all posts
Just when I thought I was done talking about how AIG had ruined my birthday, news came out today about the March bonuses from those “Rooskie Batards” over at AIG. It seems that as more bookkeeping paperwork has come out it seems that the 180 million dollars in bonus money that went to high ranking employees is actually more like 454 million dollars.
454 million dollars that is almost four times the amount that caused people to take to the streets. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had this to say.
"I simply cannot fathom why this company continues to erode the trust of the public and the U.S. Congress, rather than being forthcoming about these issues from the start,"
I will bring the pitchforks if one of you guys brings the torches and I will meet you on Wall Street.
Fears about AIG bonuses may be bigger than people realize......
For the last day I have been combing the various news sites for information about the AIG bonuses and I have to say I am a little worried. A lot of stories on the news shows this morning and the news last night is about Washington’s response to this whole AIG fiasco, how both sides of the aisle are up in arms, but I think each and every reporter is missing the bigger picture.
Everyone is looking at this from a very clean sterile academic view, but that is not the world we live in. We live in a world where there is an actual term for someone going to work and shooting up the place. We live in a world where people make the decision to kill themselves and their families to keep them from suffering because they are at the end of there rope and don’t see another way out. For all intents and purposes we live in a world full of powederkegs.
Now let me state for the record I am not advocating violence or full scale civil unrest at all. In fact I am still asking people to contact their political representatives and voice their displeasure and ask for the money back. My fear however is that before the week is over some executive coming or going from the AIG building will meet some form of violent end. People (not numbers, not figures, actual people) with real bills and real problems are angry, tired, and frustrated, and probably very tired of hearing the term “Too big to fail”.
Everyone who reports about this story repeats the same line that these bonuses are not that big, that they are necessary to keep quality people, they these things were negotiated before the great financial crisis. But when you have been laid off from your job and you or trying to stretch a unemployment check, when 700 + people all apply for a janitor job, all this sounds like is jabber jabber jabber, or more specifically, once again the white collar is so much more important than the blue collar.
Stating once again, I hope and pray that my imagination is just running away with me but I also know you can only push people so far and sell them so much bull before you get a dangerous, uncontrolled, and illogical reaction.
Though it seems so much longer it has been exactly 6 months since the economy officially took a nose dive and we the tax payers of the United States got into the bank bailout business. Anyone who has been on my blog for the last 6 months knows how I have struggled to keep my blood pressure in check whenever those three little letters AIG are mentioned, usually because it is followed by some shenanigan. One thing about them, they continue to not disappoint….
The top executives at AIG will be taking home bonus checks totaling around 65 million dollars. These “retention” bonuses were promised last year and are necessary in order to keep the cream of the crop put at AIG; otherwise they may pick up and move to another bank/financial institute down the street. After a lot of back and forth between Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and AIG CEO Edward Liddy it was determined that these bonuses had to be paid so that legal action was not brought up against AIG by employees for breach of contract. It has also been determined that the US government has no legal stance in which to keep the bonuses from being distributed.
So essentially the same people who ran AIG into the ground and helped cause the modern day recession not only get off scot freebut they get paid for doing the bad job that got us here! Now maybe it is just me, but that only makes sense in Bizarro opposite world.
I am pleading with everyone who reads this to do more than just get mad, I need you to do something. Included in this email is a website. The website will give you the website of each and every state representative that you send to DC to work for you. PLEASE!!!!! We need to write, email, call, send smoke signals…whatever it takes to get the message across that Wall Street can’t keep pissing in our faces and telling us it’s just rain, while they laugh themselves silly with our money. Tell them that we did not cough up 170 billion dollars that we didn’t have so they could party, entertain, and continue to live high on the hog while we continue to cut back and scrimp and try to make ends meet. Tell them that if they have no legal standing on how our money is used then you know what, we just need to have our money back.
"I don’t feel I have done anything that is idol worthy but I learned a long time ago that it is the little everyday things you do that people notice, so be the best you you can be." DJ
"If you don't tell your story someone else might, and they may not tell it as well" The Monkey
"Let he who is without dogshit on his sneaker, take the first step on the white rug!" Whoopi Goldberg
