7 ms·

Sorry Jake, but I don't feel sorry for you. Well, maybe a little, if your claims about being tarred unfairly with the CDS debacle are true. But stop whining.

Sorry Jake, but I don't feel sorry for you. Well, maybe a little, if your claims about being tarred unfairly with the CDS debacle are true. But stop whining. All over the USA, people who work hard, who get great reviews from bosses, customers and peers, who were promised bonuses and profit sharing, are seeing instead slashed pay and benefits. That is, if they are lucky, and not getting RIFed. Your company is in the crapper, and being propped up by taxpayers both explicitly by government bailout, and implicitly by the Fed. If you worked anywhere besides the financial industry at a company in AIG's shape, you wouldn't be getting a bonus, not because of politics, but because there wouldn't be any money to pay one. Spare me the false charity as well. People in your line of work compensated themselves as if they were founders and early investors in F500 companies, while holding positions that would barely command six figure salaries in other industries. I'm sure most readers here on HN would like to be in the position to write a 750k check to charity in the face of a depression. That $100 million a year in equity and commodity trading? How much of that was on the back of the tech and housing bubble, and exploding oil prices? Sans the games the guys down the hall were playing with CDS and CDOs, would your returns even have been so high?

bilbo0s 18y ago
EXACTLY!!! Commodities and equities were leveraged as well at AIG. Leveraging that the CDS business provided capital to finance. It's all connected. I think this guy is choosing facts to put himself and his team in the best light. There are probably a lot of people over there dressing down the CDS guys for being incredibly irresponsible, and the CDS guys were, I'm not trying to deny that. That said, the other business lines were more than willing to leverage off of that irresponsibility when the bets were going the right way. I think it is time for ALL of us to admit our complicity in the current disaster. Wall Street was incredibly irresponsible. Regulators didn't regulate. And WE the American people, bought a lot of stuff we could not afford, and didn't save nearly as much as we should. Consider this, do you work for a company that exists solely due to the presence of investment capital? If so, do you feel a burning need to leave your position and go to work for a company that actually sells real things, to real people or companies, for real money? I am not denigrating anyone here. My only point is that the sooner everyone owns up to their part, the sooner we can do what we need to move on. We should stop trying to hang it all on Bush, or regulators, or bankers, or Republican Congressmen like Phil Gramm, or Democratic Congressmen like Chris Dodd. Or on the guy down the hall, as the guy in the article is trying to do. They all played a role, but it was a team effort. We all contributed to this crisis. Now it is true that some contributed more than others. But for a guy who works at AIGFP to claim to be blameless, is fanciful if counter productive at best, and potentially divisive in the style of Marie Antoinette at worst. Probably somewhere in between like most of these things.
- endtime 18y ago
  We all contributed to this crisis. I take issue with this. I certainly didn't contribute to the crisis - I'm a student and have been since kindergarten. The vast majority of Americans didn't contribute to the crisis. I'd say that even the majority of people on Wall St. didn't contribute to the crisis. Those who are responsible should own up, but playing the "everyone say sorry" game is pointless if not disingenuous.
  - jimbokun 18y ago
    "The vast majority of Americans didn't contribute to the crisis." What percentage of Americans bought greatly over valued homes and have excessive credit card debt? The net savings rate has been 0 in the recent past. I will take at face value that you, personally, have not contributed to this crisis. But a large number of Americans have.
smallpaul 18y ago
> But stop whining. All over the USA, people who work hard, who get great reviews from bosses, customers and peers, who were promised bonuses and profit sharing, are seeing instead slashed pay and benefits. That is, if they are lucky, and not getting RIFed. Most of them are not the subject of congressional investigations. > If you worked anywhere besides the financial industry at a company in AIG's shape, you wouldn't be getting a bonus, not because of politics, but because there wouldn't be any money to pay one. No, but he'd get a salary. Which he did not at AIG (according to his account). > People in your line of work compensated themselves as if they were founders and early investors in F500 companies, while holding positions that would barely command six figure salaries in other industries. Yes, that's more or less what he said in the article. > I'm sure most readers here on HN would like to be in the position to write a 750k check to charity in the face of a depression. Yes, that's more or less what he said in the article. > That $100 million a year in equity and commodity trading? How much of that was on the back of the tech and housing bubble, and exploding oil prices? Sans the games the guys down the hall were playing with CDS and CDOs, would your returns even have been so high? Perhaps your job also depends on the bubble economy. We'll know by this time next year.
comatose_kid 18y ago
I strongly disagree. He didn't make those risky bets. He honored his end of his agreement, and so should be compensated accordingly. Perhaps you'd feel differently if your boss asked you to work for the next year, promised you a big lump sum, but then at the end of the year said 'sorry, but the money we borrowed from the gov't means it's not politically expedient for us to honor our agreement'. Emotions aside, it sounds like he's getting a raw deal (and it doesn't matter if he's already worth millions - his net worth should have no bearing on whether or not the contract should have been honored).
zurla 18y ago
The company should have gone bankrupt (and certainly would have, without US government intervention), in which case none of these people would have seen any bonuses at all. he should be grateful for the $1 :-)
- Rod 18y ago
  Do you realize what the consequences of letting AIG go bust could be? Do you realize that bailing out crippled financial institutions is entirely different from bailing out Motown's idiot car companies? Do you realize that AIG has various divisions and only one of them was trading the toxic financial products that destroyed the company? Your comment sounds like demagogy.
  - kiba 18y ago
    Unprofitable firms and crippled fianancial insitituions are a libability to the economy. Proping them up with stolen taxpayer money is not a sound way to run an economy. Profit and loss exists for a reason, they finetune the allocation of resource to ones we find most efficent. If we don't allow the bust to run the course, than we will be less prosperous in the long run. Beside, this is not the end of the world. We suffered worser recession like the recession of 1921.(Yes, worser than the Great Depression) Then the 1920s became the roaring 20s.
    - Rod 18y ago
      I am also a fan of "Darwinian Capitalism", but AIG and other huge financial institutions aren't called "too big to fail" without a reason. I advocate pragmatism over blind ideology. As much as I would like to see AIG implode, I think one should be careful and take into account what that would imply, and how the shockwave of destruction would affect the rest of the economy. All in all, all I am saying is: analyze the problem, make decisions based on data, not based on gut feelings or dogma. Last but not least: the financial world in the 1920s was completely different than what it is today. Unfortunately, in Economics experiments are not exactly reproducible. For one reason they call it the dismal science, right?
  - 18y ago
petercooper 18y ago
Is there any way to find out what the original URL was on "dead" items? There really should be a way, even if it's some crazy tiny nofollow link someplace ;-) (I can Google in this case, but that's not always true.)
- dcurtis 18y ago
  Change the word "item" to "edit" in the URL.

bilbo0s 18y ago

EXACTLY!!! Commodities and equities were leveraged as well at AIG. Leveraging that the CDS business provided capital to finance. It's all connected. I think this guy is choosing facts to put himself and his team in the best light. There are probably a lot of people over there dressing down the CDS guys for being incredibly irresponsible, and the CDS guys were, I'm not trying to deny that. That said, the other business lines were more than willing to leverage off of that irresponsibility when the bets were going the right way. I think it is time for ALL of us to admit our complicity in the current disaster. Wall Street was incredibly irresponsible. Regulators didn't regulate. And WE the American people, bought a lot of stuff we could not afford, and didn't save nearly as much as we should. Consider this, do you work for a company that exists solely due to the presence of investment capital? If so, do you feel a burning need to leave your position and go to work for a company that actually sells real things, to real people or companies, for real money? I am not denigrating anyone here. My only point is that the sooner everyone owns up to their part, the sooner we can do what we need to move on. We should stop trying to hang it all on Bush, or regulators, or bankers, or Republican Congressmen like Phil Gramm, or Democratic Congressmen like Chris Dodd. Or on the guy down the hall, as the guy in the article is trying to do. They all played a role, but it was a team effort. We all contributed to this crisis. Now it is true that some contributed more than others. But for a guy who works at AIGFP to claim to be blameless, is fanciful if counter productive at best, and potentially divisive in the style of Marie Antoinette at worst. Probably somewhere in between like most of these things.

endtime 18y ago
We all contributed to this crisis. I take issue with this. I certainly didn't contribute to the crisis - I'm a student and have been since kindergarten. The vast majority of Americans didn't contribute to the crisis. I'd say that even the majority of people on Wall St. didn't contribute to the crisis. Those who are responsible should own up, but playing the "everyone say sorry" game is pointless if not disingenuous.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  "The vast majority of Americans didn't contribute to the crisis." What percentage of Americans bought greatly over valued homes and have excessive credit card debt? The net savings rate has been 0 in the recent past. I will take at face value that you, personally, have not contributed to this crisis. But a large number of Americans have.

smallpaul 18y ago

> But stop whining. All over the USA, people who work hard, who get great reviews from bosses, customers and peers, who were promised bonuses and profit sharing, are seeing instead slashed pay and benefits. That is, if they are lucky, and not getting RIFed. Most of them are not the subject of congressional investigations. > If you worked anywhere besides the financial industry at a company in AIG's shape, you wouldn't be getting a bonus, not because of politics, but because there wouldn't be any money to pay one. No, but he'd get a salary. Which he did not at AIG (according to his account). > People in your line of work compensated themselves as if they were founders and early investors in F500 companies, while holding positions that would barely command six figure salaries in other industries. Yes, that's more or less what he said in the article. > I'm sure most readers here on HN would like to be in the position to write a 750k check to charity in the face of a depression. Yes, that's more or less what he said in the article. > That $100 million a year in equity and commodity trading? How much of that was on the back of the tech and housing bubble, and exploding oil prices? Sans the games the guys down the hall were playing with CDS and CDOs, would your returns even have been so high? Perhaps your job also depends on the bubble economy. We'll know by this time next year.

comatose_kid 18y ago

I strongly disagree. He didn't make those risky bets. He honored his end of his agreement, and so should be compensated accordingly. Perhaps you'd feel differently if your boss asked you to work for the next year, promised you a big lump sum, but then at the end of the year said 'sorry, but the money we borrowed from the gov't means it's not politically expedient for us to honor our agreement'. Emotions aside, it sounds like he's getting a raw deal (and it doesn't matter if he's already worth millions - his net worth should have no bearing on whether or not the contract should have been honored).

zurla 18y ago

The company should have gone bankrupt (and certainly would have, without US government intervention), in which case none of these people would have seen any bonuses at all. he should be grateful for the $1 :-)

Rod 18y ago
Do you realize what the consequences of letting AIG go bust could be? Do you realize that bailing out crippled financial institutions is entirely different from bailing out Motown's idiot car companies? Do you realize that AIG has various divisions and only one of them was trading the toxic financial products that destroyed the company? Your comment sounds like demagogy.
- kiba 18y ago
  Unprofitable firms and crippled fianancial insitituions are a libability to the economy. Proping them up with stolen taxpayer money is not a sound way to run an economy. Profit and loss exists for a reason, they finetune the allocation of resource to ones we find most efficent. If we don't allow the bust to run the course, than we will be less prosperous in the long run. Beside, this is not the end of the world. We suffered worser recession like the recession of 1921.(Yes, worser than the Great Depression) Then the 1920s became the roaring 20s.
  - Rod 18y ago
    I am also a fan of "Darwinian Capitalism", but AIG and other huge financial institutions aren't called "too big to fail" without a reason. I advocate pragmatism over blind ideology. As much as I would like to see AIG implode, I think one should be careful and take into account what that would imply, and how the shockwave of destruction would affect the rest of the economy. All in all, all I am saying is: analyze the problem, make decisions based on data, not based on gut feelings or dogma. Last but not least: the financial world in the 1920s was completely different than what it is today. Unfortunately, in Economics experiments are not exactly reproducible. For one reason they call it the dismal science, right?
- 18y ago

petercooper 18y ago

Is there any way to find out what the original URL was on "dead" items? There really should be a way, even if it's some crazy tiny nofollow link someplace ;-) (I can Google in this case, but that's not always true.)

dcurtis 18y ago
Change the word "item" to "edit" in the URL.