Get Your Pitchforks Ready: Corporate Welfare Recipient Economy-Buster AIG Wants Federal "Compensation Czar" Kenneth Feinberg to Give His Blessing to Another Round of Giant Executive Bonuses

by bartleby the scrivener| AIG wants to give giant bonuses to its executives -- because there's just no way its executives are getting as much out of showing up for work as they expected (or deserve).  The Washington Post reports:

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.... The request puts the administration's new compensation czar on the spot by seeking his opinion about bonuses that were promised long before he took his post.  (WaPo)

As Truthdig observes:  "The closest we’ve come to a pitchfork moment in this whole economic crisis was the last time AIG tried to shower its employees with bonuses. You may recall that the financial giant was rewarded with $180 billion in federal funds after losing more money than any company ever did before and helping to ruin the world economy. "

AIG doesn't need Feinberg's approval and can give out bonuses without it.  It just wants to be able to whine this time around that the government agreed that it is legally entitled to absorb billions in taxpayer dollars to keep it from going under and then hand out huge compensation payments to its top executives.  As WaPo reports:

No development in the government's bailout of financial firms has angered lawmakers and ordinary Americans more than the disclosure in mid-March that the global insurer was paying more than $165 million in retention bonuses. They were aimed at retaining 400 employees at AIG Financial Products, the troubled unit whose complex derivative contracts nearly wrecked the global insurance giant.

Next week, AIG is due to distribute "only" $2.4 million in bonuses to about 40 "high-ranking" executives (WaPo) --- mere pennies compared to the last time!  What will Feinberg say?     

The Treasury declined to comment specifically on the bonuses due this month. In a statement, a department spokesman said, "Companies will need to convince Mr. Feinberg that they have struck the right balance to discourage excessive risk taking and reward performance for their top executives. . . . We are not going to provide a running commentary on that process, but it's clear that Mr. Feinberg has broad authority to make sure that compensation at those firms strikes an appropriate balance."... Of course from a struggling taxpayer's standpoint, the legality of distributing huge amounts of money to executives isn't really the issue.

BN-Pol, and especially Deb Cupples, have extensively covered the issue of executive compensation in many past publications, including (but not limited to) giant bonuses going to recipients of taxpayer funds such as AIG.  Here's a small sampling.   Read and feel the fury.  Then grab your pitchfork and follow me.

Vanity Fair on AIG's Collapse

The Daily Show: AIG Buys a Vowel & Obama Drops a Cap on Executive Compensation's Ass by Dropping the Cap on Executive Compensation

Laughing Them Out of the Bank: Citigroup Wants to Give Bonuses?

If Govt. Can Reduce Auto Execs' s Pay, Why not Bank Execs' Pay?

Krugman: Will Executive Compensation at Investment Banks Soar Back to 2007 Levels?

Sweeping Oversight Proposed re: Executive Pay & Other Things

Update: AIG to Give Bonuses and the Resulting Political Theatre

Citigroup Downgrades Wal-Mart Stocks over Possible Workers' Gains, but Ignores Executive Looting

AIG Gets Another $30 Billion: the Real Scandal

Obama's Executive-Pay Caps Don't Address the Root Problem

Richest Got Richer and Faced Lower Tax Rates

AIG Scraps Bonuses but Gives Retention Pay (Which Looks Like a Bonus)  

Waxman Wants Executive Pay Data from Banks Receiving Bailout Funds

Save Jobs by Cutting Executive Pay  

Congressman Alan Grayson on Why AIG Went Broke ; Questioning Change to Valuation Rules ("Let's Make Inches Larger While We're at It")

"What's the Big Deal? It's a 10th of 1% of the Money We Gave Them for Sucking": Jon Stewart Tracks "The Enragening" (A Twofer)