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Do AIG executives really deserve to die?
By Lauren | March 18, 2009
Public anger over the $167 million in bonuses that AIG paid to employees in its Financial Products unit is reaching the boiling point, and Congress is taking notice. That may be why Iowa Senator Charles Grassley recently suggested in a radio interview that AIG executives should consider following the time-honored tradition of Japanese executives who crash their companies: publicly apologize, then commit ritual suicide.
Clearly, the Senator has a fine sense of drama.
Since making that rather grandiose statement, Senator Grassley has simmered down and explained that he was speaking rhetorically. Probably just as well - there have already been too many suicides in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown.
Still, Senator Grassley’s demand for an apology from AIG and its management is well-taken. It was grossly irresponsible at best for AIG to throw millions of dollars of federal bailout money at the very people who brought the company down, regardless of what their contracts said. And, by the way, it was irresponsible beyond belief for AIG to promise those massive bonuses without requiring the recipients to provide satisfactory service. (Where in the world were AIG’s lawyers?????) Contract or no contract, AIG’s management should have found a way to avoid taking money from ordinary people who work hard, pay their taxes, and probably won’t see a million dollars in one place in a lifetime and giving it to overpaid financiers whose appalling greed and excessive cleverness created this mess in the first place.
Senator Grassley is right - someone at AIG owes the American people one heck of an apology.
Topics: Apologies, Business Ethics, corporate responsibility, ethics |
March 26th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
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March 30th, 2009 at 12:30 am
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