I disagree, for this reason- The bonuses were legal between AIG and some employees; AIG does not, in actuality, exist anymore, it is now USAIG, 80% owned by the US citizenry (so I've heard). The employees are owed the bonuses by a business that really no longer exists. Without the taxpayer bailout, there likely would not have been any bonuses.....The above is my opinion only.
...and there should not have been any bailout, but there was. As soon as our congressidiots gave AIG the money, it became AIG’s money. That is why there should have been specific rules against bonuses. But there weren’t because Chris Dodd specifically wrote it out of the bill.
We have to hold the dems responsible for this. No matter how angry we are at AIG, the dems did this on purpose.
When one takes over a corporation, one takes over its assets and its liabilities. AIG as a corporation still exists under new ownership so its new owners still owe.
Now had AIG been liquidated and some entity purchased only the assets, there would be no liability to any one holding a contract.
I expect the contracts will hold up in court.
It is a moral issue as to what kind of person will take that kind of money under the circumstances.
I have argued both sides, but I believe the bottom line is that the recipients of the bonuses owe the criminal enterprise known as the congress absolutely nothing.
Had congress stayed out of it and had AIG any chance of making it, those executives should have given up the bonuses in hopes of saving the company for the stockholders who trusted them.
Since congress specifically wrote the clause that made them home free, they owe nothing. Now if anyone owes the stockholders, it is congress because they took ownership.
The U.S. Congress has no right to pass bills of attainder, and that’s precisely what Schumer and Frank have been threatening.
My freedom is threatened infinitely more by fiends like Schumer, Frank, Dodd, and Obama, than by those people who have received their CONTRACTUALLY AGREED UPON compensation from AIG.