See this is exactly the wrong thing...they do not need those who caused this. They should have been fired on the spot...I blame Paulson. As for retention bonuses-what a joke a fair number of those receiving bonuses are no longer employed at AIG so why did they receive a bonus...hush money perhaps?
As I understand it, the CDS operation, which did the damage, was only a few people. I don't know what happened to those people, but clearly, if they want to make a bailout work, they need to retain most of the rest of the people. And it's not fair to string along those folks (such as Mr. DeSantis) at $1 year with false promises of huge retention bonuses if they stay and do the work.
It looks like they've probably blown the bailout with their political demagoguery, so maybe it's time to pull the plug and stop throwing good money after bad.