Golden Parachutes

Short Rant Warning.
Read the following if you don't mind my ranting for a few paragraphs......

Last evening on the news I heard that AIG, the insurance giant that has received many dollars in Federal funds, is paying executives who ran the company into financial trouble bonuses and other financial incentives. They are contractually required to do so, they said.

Here's the head and lead from the NYT site:

A.I.G. Planning $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and PETER BAKER
Published: March 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

No one will do that for you or me. No one will do that for the retirees who are struggling with decreased investments that they expected to live on. No one will do that for those of us nearing retirement with not enough time for the stock market to regain enough to go back to what we actually put in.

If someone suggested that you or I get those bonuses and incentives for our support they would be shouted down as socialists.

If this is completely free market forces at work, why do we get the short end of the staff? Why do we pay for the losses through our taxes but don't get the benefits when things are going well. Only these executives get support either way.

I could be wrong, but it is not the way Jesus would want to see it happen. Where are the rising voices of moral outrage in the religious right? Where are those who will stand up and be heard that being a Christian is far more than the happy by-and-by. It is doing what is right. Here. Now.

End of Rant.

For now.