AIG Can't Believe We're Letting Them Do This

As several newspapers have reported, AIG has as of Sunday, March 15, paid out an additional $165 Million in bonuses to its executives and other employees.


This money is obviously coming right out of the pockets of taxpayers, and the situation has now gone from ridiculous and criminal to something worthy of a march with flaming torches.


When will the American people wake up!!?? The United States is being robbed in the most real sense of the word. The executives of AIG have no intentions of cleaning the mess up, nor could they, nor would they ever even know where to begin.


What is happening now is pure and simple theft, and it is happening as the amount of unemployed Americans is nearing 15% (counting those who have given up looking for work, who are curiously not included in most official statistics), and the number of Americans without health insurance is nearing 100 Million.


America’s big corporations have been laughing working Americans in the face for decades, and are continuing to do so even as those Americans lose their jobs, their homes, their health insurance, their very way of life and hopes for the future.


How far are working and formerly working Americans willing to go in order to protect the incredible transfer of wealth to the top 1% of the population?


How far are they willing to go to stand up for the right of robber barons to rip everyone off by staving off regulation, labor rights and consumer rights?


Pretty far it seems, if you are to believe what the Obama administration is saying. Even though Obama received the strongest of mandates for change in decades, particularly with respect to social justice, he has apparently decided that that mandate meant something completely different.


Obama’s mandate apparently meant galvanizing the rights for robber barons to rob, not giving Americans an actual healthcare alternative (this can be solved by private means alone, according to Obama) and continuing bonus payments to bankers who brought the world economic system down (don’t even think about firing them, they must be retained with bonuses for their great skills…).


AIG has received $170 Billion in taxpayer money already, which is money that will definitely never be seen again. That money went to satisfy claims for a fraction of the speculation insurance payments called “credit default swaps”.


AIG could be on the hook for, literally, trillions of dollars for these swaps. What is important to understand is that AIG has, for a long time, not had any intention of running a successful business.


When you run a successful business, you carefully consider the pros and cons of a certain investment, and act accordingly. AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and many others had a different plan: shuffle money through the company, take a fee, and let the government hold the bag when the party’s over.


The largest banks and financial institutions in the U.S. knew that they would be bailed out when the shit inevitably hit the fan, and that is what Lehman Brothers was counting on, but didn’t receive.


These companies acted accordingly: they enriched themselves for as long as they could, and would run for the hills as soon as it all came crashing down.


AIG is still in the process of being bailed out, so naturally, the executives are still trying to enrich themselves until the very end. They probably can’t believe that we’re still going along with this.


What the hell is wrong with people? Is there nothing left of self-respect in Americans? Is there no sense of justice left? Is there no pride?

It is your duty to claim your right.





Moreover, I advise that the winner-takes-all voting system should be destroyed.