Percocet. Percocet withdrawal….

"…then why aren't you volunteering?"

No thanks

Perfectly happy working a help desk for median wage. Nor do I begrudge those people one thin dime. If for no other reason than that it isn't my money.

My mistake. However, we need to make a decision here. Either we're going to let AIG fail and allow a bankruptcy court to sort through who gets what or we need to attract the kind of workers who can bring the company back to profitability.

I favour bankruptcy where profitable businesses can be sold off and set free from the burden of congress-as-manager. But if we're not going to do that, then how are we to expect A level performance when AIG is only allowed to offer F level compensation?

Plus, having thought about it more…even if some management gets some retention bonuses, the whole bonus pool is not even a rounding error on the $200 BILLION AIG bailout. Is this really what we should be devoting our emotional energy to? There's a much larger problem here. Congress increasing its own compensation and handing out my money to every one of its contributers while it claims the country is burning all around them is far more offensive to me.

You never asked me one.

It occurs to me that there's much more outrage about paying to temporarily holding on to a few key personnel is far greater than the outrage over the $10MM office renovation Vikram Pandit is planning at Citibank with taxpayer money.

Does that not seem strange?

Randy your initial assessment is correct. Allow me to assure you that this is not a line of bullshit.

John, the reason these traders are paid so much is that they do have other alternatives and they do some very complex things that the majority of people in the industry don't have the skills do do. Supply and demand. The job itself is like working in a pressure cooker – particularly now and particularly at AIG where armed guards are now posted to protect these individuals. A lot of the CDS traders I know have simply opted to quit, spend time with their families and trade their own portfolios or go into another line of business entirely. Interestingly, it is the traders who actually MADE money for the group who decided to quit because they saw no reason to stay since they will not be paid for their performance because other traders in the group are losing money or the firm is losing money in another division. So, the losers stayed and the good traders left to either take an extended vacation, start their own shop or to go where they will be paid a cut of their profits (usually private shops which don't have public shareholders and aren't eligible for TARP).

Further, a yahoo off the street can't just come in and unwind these portfolios. Fixed income derivatives are non-standardized, which means that any new yahoo would have to spend an enormous amount of time familiarizing himself with the details of every deal. Furthermore, how do you expect a bankrupt company which can offer only a trading assistant's comp and death threats to attract the skilled and experienced traders capable of unwinding complex, structured financial products which they had no hand in creating?

Of course, if you guys think that any yahoo off the street can just step up and trade fixed income derivatives, then why aren't you volunteering?

The value of the power he is amassing is far greater.

To him personally? Probably not. It's probably worth tens or hundreds of millions though. Regardless, you didn't answer the question.

My understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that the bonus amounts were based on prior year bonus amounts. These are not exactly minimum wage types. Yes, it seems like a lot to me too, but then, these guys are managing multi-billion dollar books. It was a risk assessment. The loss if they walked was potentially much higher than the cost of paying to ensure they would stay. Then again, that could just be a line of bullshit. Maybe any yahoo off the street could pickup and manage these books from day one. I suspect not.

The value of the power he is amassing is far greater.

While I do think that it is disgusting for AIG to give these bonuses to people who lost billions of dollars for the company – John

The issue discussed in the congressional circus yesterday was not bonuses to the people who lost billion for the company. AIG lost billions because it insured too many CDS relative to the capital base. That was an upper management decision and everyone agrees that these people should not receive performance bonuses.

The issue discussed yesterday was the compensation offered to traders to unwind the complex derivatives books as they close down much of that business. These guys are employees who have no hand in making the decisions that brought down AIG. Life at AIG sucks right now and the traders would simply rather not work and spend time with their families since there is no upside for them in staying to unwind the book. I personally know many people who made just that decision over the last few months as the environment and upside deteriorated. The retention bonus compensates them for staying and performing that one task.

As a taxpayer, I would prefer these traders are retained for this task because the alternative is far more costly and I am frankly tired of paying – since I belong to the 50% of the population who pays taxes. I don't know if your realize this, but you're objecting to these people negotiating compensation for their labour by objecting to something called "retention bonus" because it has the word "bonus" in it. In doing this, you give ammunition to the monkeys in congress for the Writ of Attainder and future wage controls.

Here is an example of even WORSE government waste. A Dept. of Energy funded music video on how to safely walk up stairs.

I don't how you're ordering the waste from "best" to "worst", but I agree that a video on safely walking up stairs is wasteful. I certainly wouldn't pay to rent it.

Watching the hearings yesterday, the point that congressman after congressman kept making was, "we own you". The thought that kept running through my head was, "this is no way to run a business".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDsTc2oWGSI

While I do think that it is disgusting for AIG to give these bonuses to people who lost billions of dollars for the company, I find Congress enacting taxes to confiscate money from specific people to be even more troubling.

Same dollars. Twice as troubling.

We're allowing, or rather demanding, that our government set salary and bonus caps for certain individuals.

We do the same thing with millions of government employees. The state now owns 80% of this company. These bonuses are being paid out of tax dollars. I didn't support his nationalization, and I don't support limits on "private sector" compensation, but we're blurring the line between "public" and "private" incredibly here.

I do support a marginal consumption tax limiting the entitlement of wealthy lords, who are always inextricably linked to the state, to build castles and other monuments to themselves. I don't want a few statesmen organizing the labors of thousands of other men to produce goods consumed exclusively by the statesmen.

Precisely. I'll read the rest later.