The Hokie Guru on AIG

Gettin’ close to Spring, Govloopers 🙂 It’s that time when the weather gets warmer and the cherry blossoms bloom in the Washington, DC area.

The Hokie Guru rarely talks politics on this site because he’s always thought of Govloop as an online community that is about improving government. However, when it’s in the public interest, the Hokie Guru makes an exception (and this is not a political commentary criticizing the right or the left from the Hokie Guru). If you haven’t heard, bailout king AIG plans to award millions of dollars in bonuses to employees (the government’s already committed 170 billion dollars to AIG). AIG executives report that these bonuses were structured in contracts executed prior to the company’s collapse. AIG is also shipping billions of dollars to some of the largest foreign banks in the world and is giving money to domestic banks in the United States. This means that the government is bailing out our national banks twice. There is bipartisan outrage regarding AIG’s conduct.

Let’s just say that the Hokie Guru actively supports:

1.) President Obama’s proposed overall of the financial regulatory system.
2.) The Attorney General’s efforts to recoup all AIG bonus money (the federal goverment has the power to cancel the contracts mentioned above if it is in the public interest).

There are 50,000 uneployed people in the financial services industry who would work without a bonus. Enough said.