Posted on 10/08/2008 7:12:17 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc. (AIG), the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat to a posh California resort, lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown said Tuesday.
The tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees at the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy.
The retreat didn't include anyone from the financial products division that nearly drove AIG under, but lawmakers were still enraged over thousands of dollars spent on catered banquets, golf outings and visits to the resort's spa and salon for executives of AIG's main U.S. life insurance subsidiary.
"Average Americans are suffering economically. They're losing their jobs, their homes and their health insurance," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., scolded the company during a lengthy opening statement. "Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation."
The hearing disclosed that AIG executives hid the full range of its risky financial products from auditors as losses mounted, according to documents released Tuesday by a congressional panel examining the chain of events that forced the government to bail out the conglomerate.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
It’s time to riot, my FRiends.
These execs are idiots but this is the Democrats trying to distract you. ACORN through Fannie and Freddie caused this nightmare. The Democrats are trying to shift the blame off themselves, Fannie and Freddie.
I am ALL for capitalism, but THIS, my friends, is NOT IT.
Second: They should be arrested for fraud and "perp-walked".
Third: No fines, no country club prison - hard time, hard labor - breaking big rocks into small ones for a long time.
What really angers me is that the venial congressmen acting shocked by this waste of taxpayer money while they make their living out of wasting taxpayer’s money. And what really galls me is that they get a golden parachute of hundreds of thousands of those same taxpayer’s dollars after finally retiring or (too few) being voted out of office.
US businessmen are so out of touch that they make convenient whipping boys to deflect the anger of taxpayers away from their real tormentors, the liberals in Congress.
The way I read it..this was a rewards trip for salesmen in a unit not related to mortgages. This is a common way that big companies reward the MIDDLE CLASS salesmen and their wives for meeting goals. They are arranged months in advance. It wasn’t for the CEO etc.
The timing is bad..but the people who were rewarded are just like us.
Our elected thieves did’nt do their job, the tax payers got screwed, they added an additional insult by adding a ton of pork to the payout, the tax payers got screwed again, then they have the ba**s to complain about AIG. What a laugh.
That doesn't sound like middle class salesmen to me.
I think that the trip to the resort was a complete waste of money and it shows how the execs of far too many companies see the company as an expensive plaything rather than a responsibility, but I wonder if they were in a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation.
GREENBERG, MAURICE R
NEW YORK , NY 10270
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP, INC./
DEMOCRATIC SENATORIAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE (D) $10,000
primary 06/07/07
Maybe they are like ‘you’...but in my world, there is no one I know or work with that would spend over $400,000 on their employees for ONE SHOT and I work for a BIG country wide company! This is dispicable!!!!
AUGH!!! Will America EVER wake up?
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
Yep, the democrats MADE them go spend our money at resort. Some people can't see anything but a D or an R.
*crickets chirping*
Hello? Is this thing on?
Probably not, since the answer is Chris Dodd and B. Hussein Obama. Sadly, McCain is #3...but Obama got nearly $30,000 more than McCain, so McCain is a DISTANT third.
BFD.
It's nearly a half a million dollars spent on worthless bullsh*t, when all the while they needed government help to keep from tanking. If the company didn't waste half a million dollars on this sort of thing, maybe they wouldn't have tanked.
I don't know who you think "us" is, but I'd wager that most FReepers have never been sent to a luxury spa by their employer, especially if their employer had just narrowly avoided bankruptcy by a massive government bailout.
Didn't AIG parent company get this bailout?
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