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Here’s the letter, per TPM, sent on Saturday from AIG CEO Edward Liddy to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. It is over-the-top absurdity. The disconnect from reality is impressive. The best/worst two lines of the three-page letter:
On the one hand, all of us at AIG recognize the environment in which we operate and the remonstrations of our President for a more restrained system of compensation for executives. On the other hand, we cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers — if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.
What a load of bullshit. The Obama sentence — “our President” — is laughable window dressing, practically dripping with sarcasm. Obviously, Liddy, you do not recognize the environment in which you are operating.
The second sentence, incredibly though it might seem, is even further disconnected from reality. If this is “the best and brightest talent,” it’s time to go home. The parenthetical offset about how AIG is now being operated “on behalf of the American taxpayers” is as incendiary a phrase as I’ve ever recently seen. (OK, that might have been a bit overstated, but it’s one of the more incendiary phrases that I can imagine seeing on corporate letterhead these days.) It’s a slap across the face. This was not a business that was running well that we decided to invest in; this was a business running so poorly that we had to come in and save it. Everything that came before that bailout should be on the table and open for discussion — including executive compensation.
But, no, Liddy’s not done yet. He has to get in one more irrational concept — that Treasury’s problems with these bonuses is “arbitrary.”
Are you insane, Liddy?
Right, any decision to cut the bonuses of executives at a company that has received three different bailouts from the federal government in the past six months to keep it afloat would be seen as arbitrary. These “best and the brightest” financial wizards wouldn’t be able to connect the dots and figure out why their bonuses were slashed? They wouldn’t be able to put their pay in context of the times, both of their company and of the country?
Complete. Bullshit.
Luckily, it appears that our President does get it. President Obama, per The Washington Post, has called for Secretary Geithner to “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses” and has said that this is about our “fundamental values.”
[UPDATE: Follow-up on Treasury's possible response here.]
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
Liddy’s other argument about “the best and the brightest” — this mess is so complicated that we have to retain the bastards who got us into this mess or we won’t know how to clean it up.
Its not only world’s wealth that has been squandered; its “talent” was too. Think of what the MIT brain trust could have done with all that money had they been pursuing innovation that met legitimate needs (energy, clean food and water, education) rather than high stakes shell games?