Wolverines

Cause i want to burn the place down. What are these people thinking? This is not the big retreat that was JUST in the news, this is another in one that they are planning!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aVXfypExIZ9M

AIG considered buying advertisements to explain its position, only to be told by public relations consultant George Sard that it would be ``a really bad idea.''

``To spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks,'' Sard wrote in an e-mail to Ashooh. Sard, chief executive officer of New York-based Sard Verbinnen & Co., said the message was a private e-mail mistakenly sent to Bloomberg and wasn't intended to be a public statement.

"President George W. Bush didn't push for the bailout ``to help top executives go to a spa,'' Perino said today at the daily White House briefing. Hours later, the Federal Reserve agreed to loan AIG an additional $37.8 billion on top of the initial $85 billion."


If you are a company that has 600 billion in assets, and cant find a way, or choose not to liquidate some of it to stay in the positive, then you deserve to tank imo.

F.Y.I.

Fed to provide more cash to AIG
The Fed is lending American International Group (AIG, news, msgs) an additional $38 billion.

In exchange, the central bank is getting investment-grade, fixed-income securities from AIG.

The spiraling credit crisis forced AIG on Sept. 16 to take an $85 billion loan from the Fed in exchange for a 79.9% stake in the company. Since then, AIG has used $60 billion of that loan.

Meanwhile, AIG Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy has been trying to sell AIG assets to pay off the loan. AIG executives were on Capitol Hill earlier this week, drawing fire for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an event just days before the company teetered on bankruptcy and got the government loan.

Liddy on Wednesday said that the event was for independent insurance agents and had been planned months before the company's near-collapse. No executives attended, Liddy said.

Shares of AIG lost 18.2% to $2.61.

Separately, AIG announced that it was cancelling an executive retreat at the swanky Ritz-Carlton Resort in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The Ritz-Carlton outing was to reward top independent insurance agents, which the company called a "standard industry practice."

The move was made in part because the company spent $440,000 on a similar outing less than a week after the government loaned AIG $85 billion.

The ISP Troyer and I used to work for filed bankruptcy and then the 3 top dogs ordered $70K **EACH** in office furniture. LCD tv, monstrous wooden desks and what not...ridiculous.

Then when it tanked they got a golden parachute......cunts

I'm going to hitch a ride with John Glenn next time he goes into space.  Fuck this shit.

See, thats the shit thats going to fuck us up in long run. People and buisiness just think they can keep doing this shit and theres a risk free exit program.

That program is going to come back on us in the long run.. well maybe not so long now, and put us in the drink. Capitalism will soon = epic fail.

I have a friend with AIG in chicago, it's been sort of funny to see all this shit from his perspective.  He obviously isn't important enough to get to go to retreats though. 

Man, people are screwing things up for me, I wanted my golden parachute in a few years after I graduate =\

Nothing I can say will beat that, if there is an open seat I would love to join you.

I'll respond, however I'm not sure it will do any good at this point.  You all appear to believe the crap you read/hear from irresponsible journalism.  I'm not saying things are perfect, however many journalists have not bothered to get all the facts, nor research before they wrote articles which were incorrect.  These journalists are much of the reason many companies are in the state they're in.

AIG has over 1 trillion in assets.  Our issues are liquidity, due to rating agency changes.  These rating agency changes require us to have more cash on hand... a LOT more... "in case" things go south.  Sadly, it's like a snowball.  Things always go south when rating agencies downgrade anyone's ratings.  No sane business man would sit on cash if they don't need to.  When downgraded, all the sudden they have to come up with a lot more cash... to sit on.  It's a very poorly designed way to do things, and causes a lot of issues.

You should all be very glad the fed bailed out AIG.  They would probably had had to declare bankruptcy, and it would have cause major trama all over the world. 

Seriously, how can they justify taking a bail out and still going on 1/2 million dollar corporate retreates? 

The fact that it being good short term is disputable, as it's really just a psychological bandage. I think it's going to be bad long term however, because other companies may get the idea that theres a safety net in the government to catch them when they tank. K-Mart, AIG, where will it stop?

Thats not teaching fiscal responsibility. All little companies get ate up by big dogs, do they ever get a safety net?

And really its not the goverment bailing them out, its we the people.

Make no mistake there are 3 players here: AIG, Government, and the taxpayers, and guess who is getting the shaft. AIG gets to go on with buisiness, the government gets to gouge them for high interest rate, and we pay the bailout.

I want shares in AIG for this, or I want a piece of that return on high rate loan the government will get back.

I just cant get the concept of a 600 billion - 1 trill company not having a contingency plan, nor attempting to liquidate some of its not paper holdings to restructure or bail themselves out.

Yall have plenty of other holdings besides paper right? airlines and stuff?

Now I mean no offense and dont ask for your employer AIG's blood, but at some point one of these companies should have to go under to set a wake up call example to everyone else that  hey, this is real and you need to get your asses fiscally responsible.

It's just not right that folks should have to pay twice for a service from a company. Once for their goods, then once again to bail them out. Or in my case, just once but never having recieved goods or services.

Communist

I know you work there. But really AIG should have been left to fold. if some of there branches are still pofatable then they could still go on. This is a scame thats only making it worse. the fact that they had the balls to say they needed another 37 billon 2 weeks later. your thowing good money after bad.

I hate the bailout as much as anyone else, but I have to agree that it was a necessary evil.  Even the most experienced economists couldn't begin to speculate on the wide-spread economic damage letting AIG fold would've caused.  There's a time and a place for letting someone fall on their face.  But given the fact that we might (by some standards) already be in a recession, this just isn't the time to be making an example of AIG. 

It's shitty.  I'm not happy about it, but it had to happen.  Besides, this isn't the first time the government has bailed private industry out.  Anyone else remember the $124 billion bailout during the savings and loan crisis?  Guess who was involved in the S&L scandal.  Go ahead.  Guess already!  Fine, fuck it, I'll just tell you.  John McCain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five) and the Bush family (http://rationalrevolution0.tripod.com/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm).

And since  I was having so much fun looking up crimes the Bush family has committed without real consequences, you should check this out (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/bushco/bush_crime_family.htm).

Now Joe, there you go looking at the past again!

your boss is in that list JT.....do you heckle him?

Hells no!  For as much as they're paying me, I keep my mouth shut.  Don't bite the hand that feeds.

sell out

fuck yeah!  If they're getting theirs, I'm gonna get mine!