AIG Bonus Issues and Security

[Roy Hersh]

Now this is news

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/nyreg ... wanted=all

Maybe I should hire private security to protect my Colheitas!

[Andy Velebil]

I'll come protect it....just a "small Port fee" is all i'll charge

I have no symapthy for these guys. Their company was in dire straights yet they still took the bonuses and are only now giving them back after the whole world has put pressure on them. Shame on them in the first place. I don't condone any threats of violence, that is not the correct way to go about anything. Those people need to chill out themselves and are just as bad, in a different way, than the AIG Exec's.

[Glenn E.]

It's complicated... some of these payments were not bonuses, but lump sum payments for work completed. And all of them were contractually required, which makes them not really bonuses even when they're labeled a bonus. (Seriously... if it is in a contract as a guaranteed payment, how on earth can anyone consider it a bonus? A bonus is something you're not guaranteed to get... it's extra and special. A contracted payment is neither.)

Yet they are all being painted with the same brush in the media.

So I'm of 2 minds about this. Some of these payments were clearly intended to be bonuses originally, but were negotiated into guaranteed payments. Those need to go away. Some of them were clearly lump sum payments for contracted work. People need to back off regarding those. And then the bulk of them fit some grey area in between.

[Moses Botbol]

It's complicated... some of these payments were not bonuses, but lump sum payments for work completed. And all of them were contractually required, which makes them not really bonuses even when they're labeled a bonus. (Seriously... if it is in a contract as a guaranteed payment, how on earth can anyone consider it a bonus? A bonus is something you're not guaranteed to get... it's extra and special. A contracted payment is neither.)

Yet they are all being painted with the same brush in the media.

So I'm of 2 minds about this. Some of these payments were clearly intended to be bonuses originally, but were negotiated into guaranteed payments. Those need to go away. Some of them were clearly lump sum payments for contracted work. People need to back off regarding those. And then the bulk of them fit some grey area in between.

I do not think bonus was an acurate word for most of the payments in question.