Land of Oz

Why!

It remains to be seen what sort of compensation package Robert Willumstad, CEO of AIG, the world's largest insurance company, will get now. On Tuesday, the Fed promised to back loans to the teetering company to the tune of $85 billion, in exchange for 80 percent of its stock. Willumstad owns homes on Park Ave in Manhattan; on Long Island, N.Y.; and in Vermont. According to BusinessWeek, in July his minimum cash bonus for 2008 was set at $4 million and his target bonus was set at $8 million. In 2006, Freddie Mac's CFO, Anthony Piszel, bought a reported $3.6 million, five-bedroom, 8-bath Colonial in Great Falls, Va., that is situated on five acres "with a lake, a floating staircase and two kitchens." Despite steering their companies into financial disaster, the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stand to make even more money up to a reported $25 million in so-called golden parachute packages John Thain has been CEO of Merrill Lynch for less than a year. He received a $15 million cash bonus when he signed on with the struggling company.

And there isn't a damn thing we can do about it. The CEOs bleat platitudes about ethics and honor within their companies and then when it goes bust, they take their money and run, while the peons who made them the money get nothing but a letter telling them their stocks are now worth less than the paper they weren't printed on.

And now the government is into it. If you lose your house, oh well. If a CEO loses his company, the government will step in with billions to bail them out. How about getting some of CEOs, CFOs and C-whatever-Os to cough up some millions to help their own companies out - the same companies they ran into the ground.

Labels: government, gripes, scams