If you had to find one single group of people to blame for our economic crisis, you'd definitely have to consider the financial products division of AIG.
They made huge, bad bets on the housing market that have cost taxpayers $170 billion...so far. That's more than $500 from every American.1
But get this: The Washington Post just reported that these people are receiving $450 million in bonuses—and they got their first installment yesterday.2 They destroyed our economy, and now they're being rewarded for it with our bailout money!
We can't let this stand. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Congress need to do whatever it takes to get our money back.
Can you sign our petition today and then pass it on? We'll deliver it to Secretary Geithner and the congressional committees that supervise AIG. Clicking below will add your name:
After you sign, please forward this to friends and family to make sure the outcry is impossible to ignore. The petition says: "Under no circumstances should the AIG executives who helped create the financial crisis receive bonuses. That's our money and you should do whatever it takes to get it back."
The government may need to get creative to recover these bonuses, but where there's a will, there's a way. And some folks in Congress get it. Representative Barney Frank and Senator Russ Feingold are already investigating ways to get the money back.3
Secretary Geithner already shamed AIG into reducing the bonuses they planned on paying out. But seven executives in the financial products division still received bonuses of more than $3 million each. These people wrote literally trillions of dollars in insurance contracts—those infamous credit default swaps—that they could never hope to cover. And they're getting huge bonuses for perpetrating this fraud.
AIG's main defense is that they have to honor the contracts with these employees. But let's be clear: AIG would be bankrupt and these folks would already have been laid off if it weren't for the government's massive infusion of money. The big car companies took far less taxpayer money, and they're modifying their contracts with autoworkers. AIG should do the same with its employees.4
Geithner and Congress need to do whatever it takes to recover that money.
Wall Street has proven over and over that it's incapable of policing itself. So our elected representatives need to. Sign the petition below and we'll deliver it to Secretary Geithner and Congress to let them know that we're counting on them to step up. Clicking here will add your name:
Thanks for all you do.
–Daniel, Eli, Peter, Tanya and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "A.I.G. Reveals Its Biggest Counterparties," The New York Times, March 15, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51236&id=15739-7569649-IhD467x&t=5
2. "Bailout King AIG to Pay Millions in Bonuses," The Washington Post, March 15, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51235&id=15739-7569649-IhD467x&t=6
3. "Romer: 'We're Pursuing Every Legal Means' To Undo AIG Bonuses," Huffington Post, March 15, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51239&id=15739-7569649-IhD467x&t=7
4. "UAW says it has a deal on contract concessions," The Associated Press, February 17, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51237&id=15739-7569649-IhD467x&t=8
5. "Bonus Money at Troubled A.I.G. Draws Heavy Criticism," The New York Times, March 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/business/16aig.html
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