“It’s now an all too familiar story. Taxpayer funds intended to steer our economy back to health are used to pay huge bonuses to failed executives on profits that did not exist.
AIG’s recent announcement that it will immediately spend $165 million of $400 million promised in executive bonuses adds insult to injury for taxpayers who now have an 80% ownership stake in the troubled company. President Obama was right to call to stop AIG’s multi-million dollar bonuses. But the call for accountability can’t stop there.
Rewarding AIG’s top brass is like praising the bookie who couldn’t cover his bets.
Other than misguided bonus expenditures, we do not really know how AIG or any of the recipients of federal bailout dollars spent the vast majority of the funds. AIG took a baby step in promising to provide a general accounting of how they spent less than half -- $75 of $170 billion in bailout funds – of the money they received.
AIG’s astonishing disregard for their fiduciary duty to the taxpayer could not provide a better example of why Congress must act immediately to pass legislation to create comprehensive oversight of the bailout funds."
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