bonuses

Republicans are coming to the House floor to argue for and against a resolution that’s preceding the surtax on AIG bonuses, with most of the speakers coming out against it. A rationale used by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), and Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) is that the bill contains language that credits [...]

I’ve been meaning to talk about this all week, but that pesky little AIG debacle served as quite a distraction. Anyway, as TWI has reported, there are other scandals concerning bank behavior that also are worth examining. And one of the biggest is the way banks handle their foreclosed and vacant properties.

Since the beginning of the financial meltdown last year, Mike Lillis, The Washington Independent’s congressional correspondent, has been documenting the failure of Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations to place tough restrictions on executive compensation as the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve shoveled taxpayer money out the door to bail out America’s largest [...]

Let’s say Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and other lawmakers incensed over AIG’s bonuses win their battle. The AIG executives return the money, responding either to public pressure or to legal action. The outrage dies down. Everyone feels justice has been done.
But AIG is only one villain in a cast [...]

In an impromptu press conference today on the White House lawn, President Obama tried to channel anger about AIG multi-million dollar bonuses towards reform of the financial system to make sure this sort of situation doesn’t happen again.

Opening today’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on AIG, Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass) makes a strong case for suing all those executives who got their multi-million dollar bonuses despite their high-risk incompetence that ultimately led the company down the toilet.
Reading from the contracts — which still appear not to be publicly available, though I’m trying [...]

In some corners, the anger over the AIG bonuses has turned into mindless populism that serves no purpose. That’s the viewpoint of The Washington Post, which weighs in today with a scolding editorial.
YESTERDAY, we were more skeptical than most about the “populist” backlash against the $165 million in bonuses that went to some employees of [...]

The federal government’s answer to the furor over AIG’s payments of ridiculous multi-million dollar bonuses to the same executives who helped drive the company into the ground seems to be “we can’t break a contract.”
But what about what the executives promised to do under those employment contracts?  Surely those contracts required managers and executives to [...]

More details on those AIG bonuses are coming out, courtesy of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s pestering of the company for more information, The New York Times reports.
The startling details are outlined in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services. Brace yourself, as the Irish say:
“A.I.G. [...]

More news on the business ethics front: Some Wall Street firms receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout funds are finding creative ways to get around executive compensation limits imposed by the government, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In response to expected bonus restrictions, officials at Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions that got [...]