It didn’t take long for corporate America to start brazenly shafting the American taxpayer again. Just days after the government spent $85 billion bailing out AIG, the company shelled out $440,000 to send its execs to a Southern California resort. There a good $23,000 was spent on well-deserved spa treatments.
The corruption has reached points where you just have to laugh (did you know that AIG’s CEO also gets a $5 million performance bonus?), and that’s what Saturday Night Live helps you do. Watch the video below and fast forward to the last two and a half minutes.
PS In the comments, one of our readers has offered a defense of AIG. Your thoughts?
OK..let me get this straight: You guys have a problem with AIG rewarding it top salespeople with their annual “president’s club” or whatever they call it. First of all, this was probably paid over a year ago. Second of all, fiestas like this are attended by top execs but it is really a reward for the guys who have make AIG a ton of money. Remember that AIGs basic business is fine (selling and underwriting all different types of insurance), it is their wacky finance group in England that got it in trouble. The last thing we need as taxpayers and bond holders is AIG pissing off their top sales people by not giving them their annual shindig–a well deserved reward common in many industries, not just insurance. Those guys quit and go to the competition, our bonds are worth crap.
And let’s not forget that a big spending is just what the California economy needs right now to stimulate it out of recession.
Oh please! Those guys are the embodiment of greed.
@Steve: You make a good point, but it neglects that those top sales people will go wherever the money is. I question the ethics of those sales people as well as the top of the food chain at the company. It takes more than one person to get a huge company like that in trouble.
However, people are usually satisfied with a scapegoat, so we snag an exec, publicly crucify them, and then leave the rest to continue business as usual.
But then again, I don’t think that the bailout was a good idea at all. Any Senator or Representative who voted for it ought to be ousted from their office the next time their seat is up for election.
“it’s springtime for hitler and germany”
I have no interest in defending AIG, but the notion that corporate America brazenly shafts the American taxpayer is misguided. Let’s remember that corporate America is what generates the revenue that makes taxation possible in the first place (no goose, no golden eggs for Uncle Sam). Moreover, corporate America is itself an enormous American taxpayer. In fact, it pays taxes not once, but twice: first at the corporate level and again at the shareholder level when those already-taxed profits are distributed.