Remember the financial crisis? Oh yeah, it’s not over. You know that friend or family member of yours who lost their job? You know those vacation plans you had to cancel because you need to save up a little more money? You know those Christmas presents you decided not to buy this year? You know that APR that went up on your credit card for now apparent reason? Yeah, everybody is going through tough times- including the executives at AIG. One of them just quit it’s so bad.

If you don’t know who AIG is, they are the ones who had to get bailed out by taxpayer money because of how badly they screwed up in the financial crisis, and then handed out million-dollar bonuses to executives, called retention bonuses (meaning they got them for staying at their jobs…)- and these were the people who had a lot to do with the department where the trouble happened. You know, the people who sold insurance and credit protection on the credit default swaps and other things that nobody could understand.

Man, I wish I got a $1 million bonus when I caused my company to ask the government for money just to stay afloat…

The U.S. Government now owns 80% of the company.

Anastasia Kelly, AIG's vice chairman for legal, human resources, corporate affairs and corporate communications, resigned effective at the end of this year. She will receive $2.8 million in severance.
She called it for “good reason,” and the good reason seems to be that Kenneth Feinberg decided that executives working at a company basically owned by the government should have pay caps. Not that they have to work for free or can’t get bonuses, but that they should have pay caps. Anastasia, even the guys in the NFL have pay caps. You are not special, here.

Feinberg set pay caps for top executives at around $500,000. Yep, I’d be angry too.

"We have been duped into thinking that these AIG employees have some kind of secret code that no other employee could discover if they were hired to replace them and therefore they are able to basically hold the company ransom," said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University.

I say good on Feinberg for setting limits and basically putting these folks in their place. Yes, you deserve to make a ton of money if you are dealing with high stress and tons of money. But if you screw up and practically bring the world’s financial system to its knees, especially when your job was to insure that the debts would be paid, well, you don’t deserve to make tons of money anymore- it’s that simple.

In my book anyway. You make the big bucks for making the big bucks- and getting your salary cut to half a million after getting a $1 million bonus, no matter what it was before, is not harsh. It’s a cut in your living style, yes, but it’s not a harsh thing to try and swallow. Just deal with it and be happy you have a job.

And now AIG, like any other employer where somebody quits, is looking for areplacement officials-
hey! Put me in coach I’m ready to play!

Photo Credit: DavidDMuir (via Flickr under CCL)