AIG staff get death threats

[Mari333]

Source: straits times

'EXECUTIVES of American International Group (AIG) have received death threats over the US$165 million (S$253 million) in bonuses they received, as growing outrage threatens to engulf the insurance company and cause deep damage to President Obama's infant Administration
The London Times on Wednesday reported that armed guards have been posted outside the Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products (AIGFP), prompting some employees to quit and others to stay away from work.'

Read more: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_351601.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Ordinarily, I'd say "how awful, people shouldn't do that"...

But I'm not feeling exactly sorry that those thieving assholes aren't able to enjoy their million dollar checks in peace.

[RJ Connors]

3. I can however, feel some sympathy for the rank and file workers

who are just trying to hold down a job and feed their families, who have no clue as to what kind of corruption is going on within the company they work for. We are all at risk for getting caught up in that.

[bluestateguy]

7. A rank and file employee at AIG is like being a guard at Auchwitz

They need to find a more honorable way of making a living.

[joeglow3]

19. Wow!!!

It sure is easy to sit on the outside and tell people to quit their jobs in a terrible job market. Be careful not to fall off of that high horse.

[Neo Atheist]

20. yeah fuck those secretaries!

:eyes:

[Dorian Gray]

29. Seriously

:eyes:

[cali]

22. disgusting bullshit. god, that kind of remark is repulsive.

[Lost in CT]

23. You know they do insurance products right? nt

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. Hard times sure do flush out morons nt

[deramo]

4. Selfish selfish selfish

Really A.I.G? how sad, people want you dead? Aw here's a tissue.

[roguevalley]

31. since most of them have zero power who aren't higher ups or the

goons that actually did the bad stuff, this is bad. making victims of the enemy is to cut off your own legs.

[ixion]

2. Freepers pissed at freepers for being freepers

such is the circular firing squad that has become the GOP.

[harun]

5. Well put!

[Jefferson23]

6. The GOP and their surrogates call for suicide and being boiled in

oil, so hearing of death threats at this point is no surprise.

I'm still waiting for any elected official to say they will be FIRED, REPLACED, charges of FRAUD to be announced, etc. Instead we are left with nothing but bullshit, and Barney Frank, who I generally always support, makes me angry when he says in reference to the schmucks at AIG, "they made mistakes."

They did not make mistakes, they did this because they could, and it looks like they will get away with it too. Even if "mistakes" were proven vs intentional, who the hell would want these people involved going forward, the US now owns 80% of AIG, so start cleaning house damn it.

[marylanddem]

8. I agree totally.

Clean the fucking house, damn it.

[pattmarty]

9. Totally agree. I also like Barney, but it looks like him and Dodd......

.....along with other Dems are too cozy with the banker/Wall st bunch. You're right about owning 80% of the stock too, anyone or fund that owned 80% of a company has plenty of say in how that company is run.

[Marie26]

10. Do we own 80% of the stock?

My impression is that we don't - the U.S. just wrote out huge checks to AIG w/o taking any equity stake at all. Meaning, the U.S. could pay 100% of AIG's costs & still have no say at all in how the money is spent.

[mbperrin]

13. Apparently we the people own 79.9% of the company.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/aig.explainer/index.html

(CNN) -- The U.S. Treasury Department will begin selling bonds Wednesday to help the Federal Reserve, which has had to loan out an unprecedented amount of money to businesses because of the credit crisis.


CNN's Ali Velshi says the Fed needs access to large amounts of cash to keep Wall Street confident.
1 of 2

The Fed announced Tuesday it would authorize the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to lend up to $85 billion over two years to insurance giant American International Group. In return, the government will receive a 79.9 percent stake in the company, which has 74 million clients in 130 countries.

[Marie26]

14. Thanks,

So if that's the case, the U.S. is the majority shareholder, right? So why can't we nix AIG's dumber decisions?


OK - I looked it up & apparantly the U.S. doesn't hold any AIG stock at all. Instead the Fed issued an $85 billion dollar *loan* to AIG, w/unspecified AIG assets as collateral. So the Fed is acting as a banker here, not a shareholder of the company. Meaning that the Fed. doesn't have any actual power or decision-making ability within AIG.

"The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday, with the full support of the Treasury Department, authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to lend up to $85 billion to the American International Group (AIG) under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. The secured loan has terms and conditions designed to protect the interests of the U.S. government and taxpayers. ...

The purpose of this liquidity facility is to assist AIG in meeting its obligations as they come due. This loan will facilitate a process under which AIG will sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner, with the least possible disruption to the overall economy.

The AIG facility has a 24-month term. Interest will accrue on the outstanding balance at a rate of three-month Libor plus 850 basis points. AIG will be permitted to draw up to $85 billion under the facility.

The interests of taxpayers are protected by key terms of the loan. The loan is collateralized by all the assets of AIG, and of its primary non-regulated subsidiaries. These assets include the stock of substantially all of the regulated subsidiaries. The loan is expected to be repaid from the proceeds of the sale of the firm’s assets. The U.S. government will receive a 79.9 percent equity interest in AIG and has the right to veto the payment of dividends to common and preferred shareholders."

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/09/aig-bailout-85b.html

[Lucky Luciano]

16. The gov't owns 79.9% of AIG...your source even says this

at the bottom. Actually, here are the largest holders of AIG as of the filing dates listed in this picture:

[Tansy_Gold]

21. explain this to me

it looks to me from this chart that the US Govt owns 10.425 BILLION shares. Did AIG issue those shares on top of what theyhad already issued? Were these shares that AIG already owned? If indeed they issued the 10.425 BILLION shares to the U.S. Govt, then the U.S. Govt is indeed the majority stock holder and ought to be making the decisions.

Or I could be wrong.

[Lucky Luciano]

24. You are 100% correct.

Companies often raise money by issuing shares. In this case, as a condition to receiving the BILLYUNS and BILLYUNS of dollars from the government, AIG had to issue over 10B shares to the government.

Another less incredible example is that WYNN (As in Wynn Resorts and Casinos in Las Vegas) issued 9.6 million shares yesterday at $19 per share to raise money to pay down debts. Happens all the time - and people who own shares get diluted unless they take part in the issuance. Usually the issuance occurs ata discount to the previous closing price. WYNN closed t $19.63 or so when they issued the shares at $19 and it traded very well - in the premarkets and near the open it started around $18.80, but climbed throughout the day with the strong market to close at $20.72 yesterday, though it is down around $19.95 right now. I think it traded well because there were probably not very many "flippers" just trying to buy the discount and hoping that it would trade well - I think that because WYNN has a HUGE short interest and that some of the buyers bought the offering to cover their short positions at a discount - ie they would not be selling after buying. I knew it would trade well - Had I not been laid off from my trading desk, I would have said to buy it! Another reason it could have traded well is because the float increased by more than 5% with that issuance of shares. This causes the Standard and Poors to increase WYNN's weighting in the S&P 500, which means that index tracking funds which own about 12% of the S&P 500 have to buy shares to stay inline with the index - this means that those funds would need to buy about 1.2MM shares of WYNN and this buying with a huge short interest (Meaning the shorts could get squeezed) could have helped push the stock up as well on a short term basis. OK sorry for blabbering.

[natrat]

26. geitner ensured that the 80% ownership did not have decision making power, seriously

this is the royal scam

[Lucky Luciano]

27. I don't think that is quite right

I do think that the second bullet point was revised later though to 3m L + 5.00% instead of 8.5%, but not 100% sure....and I thought this was Paulson's doing, not Geithner (though Geithner was working with Paulson).

http://www.gsionline.com/CurrentsExtra/DevilDue.html

*AIG was charged an initial gross commitment fee of 2% on the total $85 billion revolving Credit Facility.

*The facility has a two-year term and bears interest at 3-month LIBOR plus 8.5%, with a commitment fee on undrawn amounts at the rate of 8.5% per year.

*The government took a newly issued series of perpetual, non-redeemable Convertible Participating Serial Preferred Stock which will vote with AIG common stock on all matters and represents voting rights equal to but not exceeding 79.9% of the aggregate voting power of the common stock.

*The Preferred Stock is convertible to 79.9% of outstanding common stock, on fully diluted basis, immediately after the stockholder vote and will remain outstanding even if the Credit Facility is repaid in full or otherwise terminates.

[Marie26]

30. OK

It sounds like th4e gov. does actually own 80% of AIG's stock. So that would make the Tres. the majority shareholder in AIG - w/power to participate in AIG decision-making & overrule the minority shareholders. If that's true, why can't the U.S. gov. activelly control or influence AIG's corporate decisions? I don't understand that.

[Jefferson23]

15. Frustrating as hell isn't it? Some info about Dodd I'll post for you:

Treasury Attempts to “Blame Dodd” for AIG Bonuses
By: Jane Hamsher Tuesday March 17, 2009 1:15 pm


As Geithner tries to get out of the way of the AIG bonus train wreck, it looks like the designated sin eater is going to be Chris Dodd:

The administration official said the Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken. The official noted that even a provision recently pushed through Congress by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, had an exemption for such bonus agreements already in place.

So Treasury says Chris Dodd did this? In a word. . . no.

http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/17/treasury-attempts-to-blame-dodd-for-aig-bonuses/

[natrat]

41. ah so many crooked politicians, just pick one

[FailureToCommunicate]

17. An official saying AIG employee should be "FIRED,REPLACED, charged with FRAUD"

would require a backbone in Congress. There are only a few backbones available, so we need to be patient. But I agree.

[Ian David]

11. Hopefully, the extra security will cost about $213 million. n/t

[CTyankee]

12. The AIG CT headquarters for Financial Products is in posh little Wilton, CT.

Wilton is a very upscale suburban community about an hour from NYC. You hardly think of pitchforks and torches in a genteel place like that.

Estimated median house or condo value in 2007: $1,038,281.

So if you want your New England quaint charm, with some nice Revolutionary War historical sites, you can move to lovely Wilton.

Here's a nice little puff piece about the town: http://www.country-living.com/wilton.htm

[Zenlitened]

18. Hmmm... how could AIG possibly defuse this situation?

If only there was some simple thing they could do...

A decision of some sort. An announcement.

Like... oh, I dunno... DECLINE THE BONUSES???

:eyes:

[BlueIdaho]

28. Its about time... nt.

[Gregorian]

32. Misplaced rage. The problem is far more widespread. Credit default swaps were evereywhere.

It's not the bonuses. They are blatant ripoffs, but it seems that these bonuses are trivial in comparison to what should be bigger news.

[Gin]

33. I want them to be publicly embarrassed for their greed but don't want

death or physical harm to any of them or their families....maybe once names are out that cannot be controlled...but.. to go on in relative ease and have no consequences is just not fair.

[Raster]

34. Heads. On. Pikes.

[BrightKnight]

37. I wouldn't take any walks in Chingford. - n/t

[BrightKnight]

35. When the government owns 80% of a company its in bankruptcy.

In bankruptcy common share holders are usually at the bottom of the list of stake holders. They usually get zeroed out. In this case they are protecting the share holders because they want to keep private capital in the company. Also, it looks like a lot of the share holders are retirement account funds.

The government always decides what stake holders will get paid and how much. Employees are only 1 stakeholder. The Government's team is judge, jury, and executioner.

[sarcasmo]

36. I love this rage.

[glinda]

38. Oh please. Any excuse. BS. I am sure it is overblown on their part.

[mitchum]

39. Bravo

[No Elephants]

40. The $165 million is chump change compared with TARP and the other bailout money. The

media, most of whom do not understand that bailout and/or do not know how to put it so that their audience can understand it, is fanning this. Focus on the big picture and don't let the media diversion attempts get to you.