2009-03-15
Subsidizing Incompetence
Honestly, how do people get away with
this nonsense?
The US government is bailing out a company (AIG) - and while it's normally better to let companies go bankrupt, I agree that there are reasons to make exceptions. But if the US taxpayer is basically buying a bankrupt company, the rules should change dramatically. None of this "AIG would do its best to cut bonuses by at least 30% in 2009, Mr Liddy wrote to Mr Geithner." nonsense. They shouldn't have anyone earning more than $100k. There will still be plenty of people willing to be General Manager of a large corporation for that money, and it doesn't take much skill to lose money, make bad decisions and go bankrupt anyway.
If taxpayer money weren't involved I would leave it up to the mug shareholder to decide what a fair price for an incompetent executive was, but when you start dragging the tax payer into bad business, there should be stringent conditions.
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this nonsense?
The US government is bailing out a company (AIG) - and while it's normally better to let companies go bankrupt, I agree that there are reasons to make exceptions. But if the US taxpayer is basically buying a bankrupt company, the rules should change dramatically. None of this "AIG would do its best to cut bonuses by at least 30% in 2009, Mr Liddy wrote to Mr Geithner." nonsense. They shouldn't have anyone earning more than $100k. There will still be plenty of people willing to be General Manager of a large corporation for that money, and it doesn't take much skill to lose money, make bad decisions and go bankrupt anyway.
If taxpayer money weren't involved I would leave it up to the mug shareholder to decide what a fair price for an incompetent executive was, but when you start dragging the tax payer into bad business, there should be stringent conditions.