I don't understand. Why does anyone care about how much someone gets paid (salary or bonuses or both) if the money these people get does not come, in any way, from those complainning? Sure, in this case AIG got money from Taxpayers, but in the end they were contracts. And why does anyone feel they have the right to decide how much someone deserves to be paid, especially when they don't have any knowledge as to what the person does and whether their skills are worthy of any specific amount?

Interesting how people cry about "they don't deserve the money" just because the company is going down but how would these same people feel if the manufacturers of the cars they own that are still under warranty were to go out of business and told these people "we are breaking the warranty contracts"?

Working for a company does not necessarily make you responsible for the companies failure and therefor you should not be punished just because you were an employee. It seems there is a double standard here, if you get fired you are innocent of any wrong doing in the company and were screwed but if you still have your job you are partially responsible and deserve to be punished.

1. Most of those AIG execs helped make AIG money (aka, they are not part of what caused the economic meltdown), mitigating the economic damage.

2. They are being compensated in an amount appropriate for the amounts of money that they made for the company.

3. Denying them that compensation is nothing but class warfare, targetting the rich because "they are rich" (because they produce more) and punishing them arbitrarily.

4. Releasing names? thats basically giving people targets to attack, its an indirect assult, as they are certain to be assulted and harmed by ignorant and angry people.

5. Breaking the contracts is a surefire way to get them to LEAVE... if they leave AIG can't make money, if it can't make money it can't pay the taxpayer back.

6. Congress was at fault to begin with, not AIG.

The irony (and hypocrisy) here is priceless.

The funny thing is, just basic reading between the lines ehre... "plan to pay more than 210$ million in incentives for 7600 to not quit!"

Now that you remove the negative tone and think about it... if they want to quit, and it takes that much money for them not to quit... why is that? probably because its now a shit job where their money can be retroactively taken away (and has been already), where everyone hates them, where their amounts of money is reported in the news in examples of evil and to encourage people to push congress to take it away.

End result? they quit and fannie collapses, that is a probably because fannie is:

How is it expected to exist or operate without employees?

Is the next step court orders FORCING those people to remain on the job? Thats plain slavery.

That's exactly what AIG was doing.  That was an 'outrage,' this is barely a footnote.

AIG, Fannie & Freddie all lost a shitload of money & all got bailed out by us taxpayers.  How are Fanny/Freddie 'retention bonuses' any less outrageous?

I have nothing but disdain for the hypocongressmen & hyposenators with no principles beyond fealty to their own power.

Why are these salaries called "bonusses" if they don't depend on how well the company or the employee was doing?

If everything had just been a very high salary, rather than compensation and bonus, we wouldn't have this discussion.

because they are paid 0$ in salary unless they stay with the company and don't quit for a set amount of time... if you stayed with the company for the bad times, then it will eventually pay you all at once as a "bonus" for not quitting.

...unless the company doesn't get a government bail-out and doesn't have the money.

Why can they not let executives sign a contract not to leave?

They 'could' - who'd sign one?

Because forcing someone to work at a job he doesn't want for no pay is called slavery?

So what they did was, promise to pay them later if they don't leave... and when later finally arrived, retroactively took back that money (after obama, congress, and AIG management repeadedly promised they would not do so... just stay in work and continue fixing AIG)

No, it's called "enforcing the contract they signed".

And who said that the salary they would get instead of null plus bonus would be zero?

I am saying that if the companies had simply paid normal (if very high) salaries to their executives, instead of "bonusses", they wouldn't be in this situation now.

A "bonus" (Latin for "good") should be paid to an employee if he performed better than he had to and/or if the company did well. That's why people are upset now.

Like I said, try getting someone to sign such a contract.  Let us know how you do.

I don't know the market for such a career, but from what I've read, the '$1 salary + retention bonus' contracts were not the 'norm' - these were contracts entered into specifically because the company was struggling.  Whether you agree with the way they were structured or not is irrelevant - post facto abrogation of legitimate contracts is immoral and, until recently apparently, illegal.

On the other hand, the bonuses being handed out to Fannie & Freddie execs are on top of reasonably generous salaries.

What are you talking about? I would happily sign a contract that binds me to a certain employer for one year.

I doubt you would @ $1.00 per year with no possibility of a bonus.  That's the sort of contract the poster was referring to.