1) Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of AIG’s financial products unit wrote a letter of resignation to Liddy, now posted at the Times. Makes for interesting reading, as it's by someone who clearly feels under attack from politicians and subject to public scrutiny. More simply, it's a voice from AIG other than Liddy's and therefore worth the read, though I frankly think the gesture itself (and the content) is a little too mea non culpa for my taste. Jake may want to consider keeping a low profile given the attacks on other such sufferers (which I by the way, don't condone).2) A comprehensive piece by David Leonhardt who writes Economic Scene. He approaches the issue from a less personal standpoint, and lays out why retention pay is part of the faulty apparatus that had a role in bringing Wall Street crashing down. To be fair, this was written 7 days ago, and given how quickly things are moving, he may be revising his stance. But I doubt it.
3) I don't get many comments, so I was interested in a response to my post about AIG yesterday. Whoever "Anonymous" is, I think his/her comment has relevance in light of DeSantis' letter of resignation above. You can scroll down to read the post + our one-round exchange, but I want to post the comment itself here again.
AIG received $85 billion from the government. That is $85,000 (eighty five thousand) million. $165 million is less than 0.2% of that. People do not have the perception for comparing these huge numbers, everybody could imagine a million or ten million, but handling 85,000 million would be way too much for most of the population to handle.
If you get a loan of $2,000 and then go to Starbucks to buy a coffee for $4, nobody is going to complain despite the fact that it is 10 times more than what a coffee should cost.
People also tend to forget the difference between cause and correlation. Just because these managers were there when the crash happened, it does not mean they were the cause of the problem. So why not go and sue all former managers of AIG for every bonus they ever received? I guess nobody would like to do that either. And if you analyze the problem, you will eventually find that the cause is some hard to understand socio-economic mass phenomenon whose regulations require thoughtful handling.
Nevertheless it is more important to handle the 85,000 million wisely, than stigmatizing 0.2% that cannot be reversed at this time anymore. Yes, it might be an important step to calm down the masses, but it is not as important as the collective brain of the society (aka Blogosphere) thinks it is.