""Taking you down point by point would be a waste of time, especially since it's been done quite well by others. You want to come out of this clean. You want to be blameless. But even if you were the guy who filed food requisitions for the guards at Dachau, you still worked for the Nazis. Actually, to be more precise and only slightly hyperbolic, you're like the guy who cleaned floors for SPECTRE, the evil organization that James Bond was fighting. At the end of the day, you could look at where you mopped and say, 'Goddamn, that's one shiny motherfucker of a floor,' while behind you Ernst Blofeld is watching a giant fucking screen showing the launch of a nuke at London. When the British agents arrived, your ass would still get mowed down." - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

The Rude Pundit responds to the resignation letter from Jake DeSantis, AIG's executive vice president of the financial products unit, published in yesterday's New York Times. - Steven Perez

""Your life has been a lie. You have worked for a corporation that, when all is said and done, will have been responsible for as much harm to the average worker in this nation as those closed steel mills in the places you were raised. You're a glorified gambler. No, fuck that. Gamblers are more honest about what they are than you. You made bets in order for rich fucks to get richer, and you tried to convince yourself that it was a noble pursuit." - Steven Perez

$742,006.40, after taxes... I have little sympathy. - Tinfoil 2.0

Yeah, I feel really bad that some overpaid stuffed shirt won't be able to do the equivalent of sitting down at the roulette wheel and take bets on 22 red anymore. - Steven Perez

I hope all the people that feel "no sympathy" are also donating their salary this year to a charity of their choice. Because if you feel DeSantis can work without being paid, I assume you will too. - Ben Jackson from twhirl

Ben: "I'll bet everyone you know is so fucking proud of you for saying what you said. I'll bet your lover fucked you so hard last night that you thought your balls were gonna send you their resignation. I'll bet your schoolteacher parents thought, 'What a good son' over your announcement that you were giving your 'payment from AIG amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes' to 'charity.' If you're so fucking right about being owed the money, then why are you giving it away? Because you can. And that was the problem to being with. Hell, I'm guessing that along with your resignation will be a nice severance package, a golden parachute, and an antique umbrella stand to make sure your refinished floors don't get wet on rainy days. It's gonna make that three-quarter mill seem like a drop in a piss bucket. - Steven Perez

"Because if you feel DeSantis can work without being paid, I assume you will too." Hand me a shovel; there's gotta be a pony in here somewhere! - Andrew C (✓)

Ugh, what a response to someone taking control and doing something good. The author of this post is such a hater. - Mona Nomura

On the contrary, Mona. DeSantis' letter was more than a little self-serving, for the reasons stated here. - Steven Perez from IM

Self serving? Why are two punishing DeSantis for his successes? His company and our government failed -- not him. - Mona Nomura

The AIG guy is guilty of the same 'banality of evil' Adolf Eichmann was guilty of: working for a filthy system, working hard for that system, then complaining he was only 'following orders.' He's blameless, blahblahblah. May he rot in hell, though the Devil will have a hard time torturing his conscience, since it's essentially nonexistent (as are those of his Republican supporters). - Shawn Michel de Montaigne

The hate is being ramped up to create support for Government nationalizing the finacial industry. - Robert Hafer

@steven: "Bet heeeeee caaan afooooord it!" -- I'm sure there are some people in $RANDOM_3RD_WORLD_COUNTRY who would think you are grossly overpaid. Your point? - Ben Jackson from twhirl

Have you guys worked for a Fortune 50? Do you know what entails in being employed with a large corporation? How he was only a piece of the pie? The man went to a good school and got a good job. What's wrong with that? - Mona Nomura

So going to the right school and getting a job as the executive of Boeing and then starting a new department to build the death star is ok, Mona? - Scoble, Alex Scoble

Mona: Have you ever had a 401k that bottomed out because the corporate officers played fast and loose with the company's money? Try asking the folks who held portfolios when they worked at Enron or Worldcom how they feel about "just working for the company". - Steven Perez from IM

BTW, Mona: yes, I have. And you can't honestly tell me that a corporate executive ***didn't*** know what was going on behind the scenes. - Steven Perez from IM

Ben: Someone in $RANDOM_3RD_WORLD_COUNTRY didn't help deep-six the economy. Companies with unscrupulous executives like Bear Stearns and AIG did. THAT is my point. - Steven Perez from IM

Mona: when a company completely fails - say, goes bankrupt, like AIG would have without the massive bailouts _and the takeover_ - everyone there is screwed, not just the people who directly sank the ship. - Andrew C (✓)

And, given what a bang-up job the financial industry did at blowing up the economy, I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for anyone crying about "nationalization" now. In the immortal words of Porky Pig, "you buttered your bread - now sleep in it." - Steven Perez from IM

Yep, the ONLY reason this guy was able to walk away with anything was because we bailed AIG and thusly him out. Don't make it seem like this guy did everything right and is still doing things right. This guy was a very important cog in the machine that is a huge part of this economic crisis. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

You can not fault a person for being a worker bee. The executives (main decision makers) and our government should be held accountable. Did you guys even read the resignation letter? DeSantis was in commodities. - Mona Nomura

Mona: ah. So Desantis wasn't a thief. He was merely a passerby while others around him stole. - Steven Perez from IM

Here is another response to DeSantis: http://market-ticker.org/archive... - Morton Fox

To add, you guys are distributing blame to the wrong entities. Yes, people need to be accountable but think about who and what you're blaming in order to move forward. - Mona Nomura

Yes, I read it. I am skeptical that an executive at a smallish office was completely unaware of the CDS business that was AIGFP's main business, even if he himself wasn't in that line. And moreover, tough shit. If autoworkers have to eat the executives' bad decisions, there is no moral reason whatsoever why AIG execs should keep their bonuses. AIG _went kaput_ without the bailouts. In real bankruptcies, those contracts would likely have been abrogated. - Andrew C (✓)

My point is, even if he is blameless, he should shut the fuck up. A lot of bigger and smaller fry in companies deemed 'small enough to fail' can lose their bonuses, jobs, and even severance packages. - Andrew C (✓)

And the point still stands that the guy wouldn't have a job at all to walk away from if the government hadn't bailed out AIG. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

So a lawsuit settlement would've been cheaper? And quit assuming, everyone. Do you know these people personally? Have you walked a day in their shoes? You guys talk about the 'poor victims' 'greedy execs' and 'oh woe is me, as a taxpayer'. As a taxpayer, I'm pretty pissed off too - but what does this solve? NOTHING. Shouldn't we focus on how and what we can do moving forward instead of whining? - Mona Nomura

"instead of whining?", what, like DeSantis' op-ed? - Andrew C (✓)

I worked at MCI; in fact, I started 2 months after WorldCom declared bankruptcy. Every manager and supervisor in my callcenter lost huge chunks from their 401k because of the WorldCom stock crash; more to the point though they lost their pensions (which were part of their employment contract) and took huge cuts in their bonuses. And you know what? They took it, and took it with a smile, because they'd been with the company for 20 years and wanted to see us make it through. Not a SINGLE ONE OF THEM complained about how unfair it was for them to not get their bonuses. - FFing Enigma

Callcenter and executive pay structures are very very different. Plus, MCI didn't get a bail out. AIG did. - Mona Nomura

The Eichmann comments reminds me, the Nazis created the same kind of hatred of the Jews so that they could justify concentrtion camps. - Robert Hafer

Google didn't do so well last year, as judged by their stock price. Top three execs get $1. There's a lesson in that for a lot of companies. Get paid well in the good years, fine, but when you're going belly up at the expense of a lot of people who have no money all bets are off. BTW, I'm not for nationalizing anything. AIG should not exist today. - Tinfoil 2.0

The point is Mona, that we should have kicked out all the bums at AIG once we bailed them out. Experience? Screw them! The only experience they showed was that they knew how to run a ship directly in to an iceberg. They don't deserve their earnings of the past 5 years. Period. Don't like it? Don't take the government money. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

WorldCom also came out of bankruptcy without government aid. And was sold to Verizon, so in truth they're still around and functioning properly. The staff (executives down to first tier management) all made sacrifices to make up for the amazingly huge mistakes Bernie Ebbers made with that company. Bear in mind, he was convicted in the largest accounting scandal in US history, an US$11-billion loss to investors; it's not like we're talking peanuts here. - FFing Enigma

Someone made a reference comparing AIG to Nazis? Excellent. I call Godwin's law and Pro-Desantis people win. - Ben Jackson from twhirl

Sad when people don't understand Godwin's law... (and besides, by the same logic, the anti-Desantis people also win; see just a little later in the thread.) - Andrew C (✓)

Look - I don't like the government's decision of bailing out AIG as much as the next person. I also disagree with them paying bonuses. But while we're still talking about things that happened, things are still going on. Why aren't we focusing on the incompetency of bail-outs in general? Epitome of this country - cry outrage! Then forget about it once all the emotions settle down. That's the reason nothing gets solved around here. - Mona Nomura

@Ben: Exactly. @Mona: Everything you said was the point I was trying to make in the earlier post in FF (the one with the original OpEd letter) - Chieze Okoye

"But while we're still talking about things that happened, things are still going on." Such as, IMO, removing personal and corporate incentives to take horrendous risks secure in the faith of the gov't bailout if things go south. I think the banks should have been backstopped, actually, but the shareholders should have been wiped out and the execs should have been fired. - Andrew C (✓)

Also, I think emotion is a vital component of how things get done. The emotion that FDR harnessed was partly how he got his reforms in place. Hell, the anger Enron stirred up spurred reforms like SarbOx, which hopefully will catch the financial crooks this time... - Andrew C (✓)

But SorbOx is a awful law, poorly crafted to hastily to respond to the mob. - Robert Hafer

That's the nice thing about "awful laws": they can be tightened up, because there is always some fool out there who's intent on testing the limits of the law. - Steven Perez from IM

Mona, are you sure that you are not helping some people to get around of justice by talking public to *get over it and concentrate on future* ? if we allow legalized gangster to get away unpunished, where's guarantee that the story won't repeat again? landmark case is necessary IMO in this case - just to give future robbers sign that it will end up in court regardless of robbing scheme. - A. T.