The Human Face of AIG
There’s an Op-Ed in the New York Times today that reflects what I was trying to say the other day in my post that rocked the hinges off the earth and almost sent America crashing into the sun, that’s how controversial and powerful it was. To wit:
After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.
I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.
You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.
The whole thing is worth reading. Okay, I know there are plenty of people who have it much worse off than financial industry types, and in some ways I’m wasting my energy worrying about them. But I am trying to recognize that they’re just ordinary people who got swindled by a flawed American dream, and not a bunch of Lex Luthor monsters. And if I had been screwed out of my life savings because some other dude at my company made bad decisions, and now there were no jobs left in my industry, I don’t think it would make me feel any better to know that other people were in bad shape. You can always find someone who has it worse off than you, right?
Update: I’m reading the comments on this article, and the thrust of most of the comments is “fuck you, my life is way shittier than yours.” Nonetheless, some interesting points here. First of all:
When you say that last fall many of you stayed at A.I.G. precisely because you were told that your contracts would be honored, can you understand that some of us wish that many of you would have stayed on simply because of your sense of pride in your work, and because of your sense of duty and patriotism?
Okay … who does that? Seriously, who does that? I have never worked for a company that showed an ounce of loyalty to me, so I don’t know how I could be expected to have this overwhelming sense of duty to my company. This ain’t the ’50s … it’s every man for himself out there, or at least it has been for as long as I’ve been in the workforce. As for patriotism, you could make that argument about everything we do. You should recycle that tin can out of a sense of patriotism. You really should donate 75% of your salary to charity because it’s patriotic. I mean, come on.
This letter and this man is a demonstration of character. No matter how envious we may be of his income and other employees like him, who benefited from policies favoring the wealthy. He is still basically innocent and it is an unfortunate reality, that many innocent people get chewed up in the machine once the corruption has been exposed.
We all know that the ranting and “search for the guilty and punish the innocent” charade, only commences after the exposure, rarely before. We also know that our public officials are usually looking the other way, until it comes to the public’s attention. We wake up for awhile, remember that we know this is going on and something needs to be done about it. We act like concerned and responsible citizens that want our laws to be enforced, and our destructive policies (lobbyists) to be eliminated. We even start talking about a revolution…for about a day.
Amen. Amen, amen.
So yes, Mr. DeSantisto, you and the folks at AIG have become the national whipping boys and that’s not really fair or helpful. Americans ought to be outraged at our own complacency and unwillingness to demand a more equitable society. I won’t be holding my breath.
Amen, amen, amen. Amen.
I’m not decided yet whether or not I sympathize with Md. DeSantis, but for all those who vilify him in response to his article, there are a few points in this debate that really bother me:
1. Mr. DeSantis and AIG entered into a voluntary contract between two private parties. The sanctity of private contracts is a cornerstone of our nation, whether you as a third party like what’s in the contract or not. For anyone, including and especially our elected officials, to advocate that one party unilaterally abrogate a contract simply because it is “vile” is simply unacceptable and more outrageous than the contract itself. Such an act would create a dangerous precedent that will undermine our nation’s core principals and our economic recovery.
2. Our government decided to keep AIG solvent, which was its decision, not ours or Mr. DeSantis’. It was a decision made by the Fed and the previous administration and it is a decision which the current administration supports. Saying that his contract should have been invalidated because AIG would have otherwise gone bankrupt is not a relevant point. The company did not go bankrupt and the contract remained valid.
3. If the Attorneys General of NY and CT actually threatened AIG employees in the manner described by Mr. DeSantis, then that would constitute a gross abuse of their power, which deserves investigation itself. The AGs are meant to enforce the rule of law. they had no standing to act for any other reason. If they determined the contracts to be illegal, then they could have sued those who did not return the money. Coercion by any other means is a violation of the public trust.
I’ve been wondering all that meself.
As a taxpayer, and a defacto part owner of your failed employer, I would like to take this opportunity to gladly accept your resignation.
You, and those like you, apparently are oblivious to the fact that your employer is crumbling, and is presently only propped up by the U.S. Government. Had the Government permitted AIG to become insolvent, you would have certainly been facing a substantial likelihood of having the bonus contract nullified by a bankruptcy judge. And, you likely would have been looking elsewhere for employment anyway while the failing company reorganized.
Great! That’s not the point. The government did not permit AIG to become insolvent. If AIG had gone bankrupt and Mr. DeSantis had lost his job, he would not be writing an Op-Ed in the New York Times about how AIG had betrayed their promises. This commenter is arguing that AIG should not be in business, while Mr. DeSantis is arguing that he’s been thrown under the bus.
And I think that’s the whole thing that continues to bother me … is that this outrage just seems like another example of trying to find humans to blame for what is a crisis of culture. We are all guilty. If you’re going to argue that Mr. DeSantis should just be happy for what he has, then I argue that so should you, and so should everyone who is alive. I wouldn’t consider myself well-off, but there are plenty of people in the world who would. And I can’t feel guilty for just trying to survive in the only culture I know.
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March 26th, 2009 at 4:59 am
I think it’s completely unfair to equate DeSantis being happy with what he has and everybody else being happy with what they have. The crucial difference there is he’s got plenty. He didn’t lose his life savings. He lost a contracted bonus payment.
I don’t have any intention to make an argument about redistributing the wealth here. People can be rich. People can be poor. What I don’t understand is why you would suggest those who worked their asses off for decades and got screwed out of their pensions and 401ks and life savings and are working three menial labor jobs just to stay afloat now should be lumped in with poor, innocent Mr. DeSantis, who as far as I can tell is just getting a lot of public anger directed his way and not much else. These are people who after all this can still afford to pay for full time security guards at the end of their driveways. A lot of “innocent” people got swept up in this mess and frankly, I don’t have a problem with DeSantis getting some mean emails and feeling the need to give back 3/4 of a million dollars, whether he earned it or not. A lot of people earned a lot of money they had to give back, whether because of public anger or because their investments evaporated. Right now, I don’t see a difference. It’s all part of the same big ball of screwup.
I am perfectly happy with the public anger being directed toward AIG employees, guilty or not. It’s got to start somewhere. Whether it builds enough and is redirectly properly is entirely something else. But oo think we’re culturally aware enough to be able to process a concept like “we are all guilty” is wishful thinking. We don’t get pissed about abstracts like that. We get pissed when we’re being taxed unfairly or when our toilets are overflowing with shit while AIG’s are overflowing with money. And if that means a man who has a social standing high enough to be able to write an op-ed in the New York Times gets some shit on his hands, then fine by me. He can hire a second security guard and he’ll still be living just fine.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:29 am
There are two issues involved here, which too many people are conflating.
I don’t believe Mr. DeSantis (or his ilk) should be blamed for this mess, but I don’t particularly find them deserving of much sympathy. Certainly not in the way that millions of people experiencing actual, you know, suffering are.
There has been a massive redistribution of wealth happening in this country for the past couple decades. Mr. DeSantis, and many others, have been on the winning side of this formula. Most of the country has been on the other side, watching their wages stagnate, health care options disappear, and their consumer debt climb to historic heights. The ‘middle class’ as we used to know it has been vanishing at a frightening pace.
Mr. DeSantis reaped the benefits of this unfair system for two decades. Good on him. I don’t blame him for that one bit. Most of the people complaining or calling for his head would have done the same thing had they the ability.
But now the chickens have come home to roost, as it were. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom, he says. No – it’s because the deck was stacked in your favor that you benefited more than most. There are millions of people who worked much harder for far longer and now have nothing. The fundamental flaws of the system have been revealed: you can’t create something out of nothing, and trading meaningless pieces of paper back and forth to enrich an elite few (a process fueled by the 401k’s and pension funds of the un-elite many) can’t sustain itself. The money that bought Mr. DeSantis’s house and paid for his kids’ private schools was imaginary, and now some of it is going to disappear.
The fact that there are death threats against these guys is appalling. I’m glad Mr. DeSantis was able to enjoy his fantasy life with fantasy money for as long as he did — I’m sure it was a fun ride. But that carnival ride is over, and now he gets to stand in line for the city bus home like the rest of us.
I appreciate his efforts to put a ‘human face’ on the situation, but I find it hard to say “boo-hoo.” Instead, I’ll offer this: “Welcome back to the real world, Mr. DeSantis. It’s not so bad here, you know.” I’m sure his schoolteacher parents would offer the same sentiment.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:22 am
There’s a difference between empathy and pity. I empathize with Mr. DeSantis and I can understand how I could have ended up in the same situation, had I not been born with the gift of spinning words into bricks of solid gold. And I don’t think if I lost my job and was getting death threats because of something that a dickhead in the cubicle down the hall did, my first thought would not be, “man, I have it a lot better off than most people.”
But in actuality, anyone who is reading these words should be saying that to himself every day. The American way is not to see ourselves as richer than others, it’s to see ourselves as poorer than others. Matt or Shea, if either of you lost your jobs, even though you have tons of family support and the chances of you ending up in a homeless shelter are pretty miniscule, I would empathize with you. If you believe that Mr. DeSantis is a fundamentally different kind of human being, than I can’t really argue with that … that’s just a different world view. But I think DeSantis is just like me, and if I were in his situation, I’d be upset, too.
March 26th, 2009 at 9:50 am
“Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid.”
Get back to me when your financial standing in the world allows you to work for an annual salary of $1 because of a sense of duty to your company. Get back to me when your lifetime earnings even APPROACHES the $740k in after-tax one-time bonus money DeSantis returned. Get back to me when the New York Times runs an op-ed piece from one of the UAW workers whose GM contract was forcibly renegotiated.
No, I’m not going to end up in a homeless shelter if I lose my job, and neither are you or Shea, but having lost it now three times in the past seven years, I can unequivacably say they were the worst and most stressful three times of my life. I’m not arguing that losing a job isn’t stressful across the board, but I guarantee you DeSantis was not suffering for what some dickhead down the hall did the way you or I would.
If you were in his situation — his exact situation — you would be pissed about the course of events, but you would find another high-paying financial sector job soon enough and your wealth would insulate you in the meantime. If you were in his situation at, say, Princeton, you would be fucked!
On a purely theoretical level, yes, fine, I can empathize. I can empathize that getting screwed out of good money by a shitty branch of the same company is not a great thing. But I’m with Shea on this one. I consider his standard of living to be so far removed from the reality of 99% of everybody else in this country that I can’t muster any real empathy.
I don’t consider him inhuman for it, of course not. He could very well be somebody I was friends with in college who made their way up in that world. But I can’t equate his situation to mine, if I were to have experienced it on my scale, because the two aren’t analagous as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t even close. We’re talking about $740,000 AFTER taxes as a BONUS! I won’t have seen that much money in my entire lifetime until well in my 40′s, if even then! And that’s why he’s not just like me.
You can argue about human decency all you want, but to me this whole issue is fundamentally about money.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Um. He didn’t lose his job. He quit because of the outcry of the extra millions he was getting to encourage him to not quit.
If any of you quit your job, then write about how much people made your job suck, I won’t have much empathy for you.
March 26th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Well, I haven’t seen an op-ed by a GM worker, true, but this is also the first time I’ve read an op-ed from someone who was actually inside AIG and being affected by the bonus situation. Personally, I find this to be an important perspective that I’m interested in reading. I interpret you to be saying that he has no right to complain about anything because he has wealth. I disagree with that perspective. I think no matter how much wealth we get, we will still feel like it’s in danger of disappearing at any moment, because that’s how we are conditioned to feel in our society. That’s what the very concept of money does to us.
I read this op-ed as him being upset about the way AIG handled the situation while maintaining a reasonable perspective about his relative luck. He admits knowledge of his position of privilege and he says he’s giving his bonus money to charity. Plus, he’s putting himself out there for public vilification. This isn’t a “let them eat cake” type of situation. If you ask me, he’s one of the good guys.
I think you can feel as though you have been wronged while still realizing you have it better than others. They are not mutually exclusive. And even if someone makes a shitload of money, it does not mean your employer can break your contract without going through proper legal channels.
And also, to assume that DeSantis will not feel exactly the same amount of “stress” as you felt when you were unemployed is the antithesis of empathy. Whether or not he has a “right” to feel that stress is a different question, and one that I feel unprepared to answer without venturing into self-righteousness. But there are plenty of people dying of cancer who would say, “boo hoo, poor Ransford, he’s having trouble finding a cushy corporate job.” Or, in my case, “oh, poor Dinsmore, he’s having trouble getting paid to sit at a computer and update his blog comments every five minutes. Boo fucking hoo. My lungs are exploding.”
What’s so wrong with the belief that we should try to be grateful for what we have as opposed to angry at others for having more than us? It’s not an issue of human decency, it’s about understanding our fellow man in an effort to move forward as a society. Pointing fingers and finding people to vilify leads to believing that we can change the problem by taking care of a few bad seeds. We will come out of this economic crisis with new laws governing a tiny sector of our society, and in 2 years, another form of inequality will spring up. I hope to God I’m wrong, but it seems like we’re heading down the same ignorant path we have always been on.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Well, Gunga Din, you are a better man than I. I concede the argument to you.
I would like to note, however, that I never implied that the man has no right to complain or to feel stress. What I meant was that his tremendous wealth insulates him from much of what you or I would identify as crushing stress, such as how without work we’re going to pay our bills, our rent, our mortgage.
But there I go again when I said I’d conceded.
Anyway. My final word: I’m with David Rees on this one:
http://www.mnftiu.cc/2009/03/25/the-aig-death-threats/
March 26th, 2009 at 11:34 am
“These AIG losers bring the country’s financial system to its knees, get paid millions of dollars for their troubles, walk away unscathed, and then turn around and complain because some idiot using a computer at the public library decides to hit “send” before catching his breath?”
I guess we’re all responsible for the sins of our employer.
March 26th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Also, I will note that if the real problem was getting death threats, DeSantis had the balls to out himself, thereby making himself more liable to be the recipient of all that hatred. So, good on ya’, Rees, I love your cartoons, but all I hear is more sour grapes.
March 26th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Alright. I know I said I was conceding, but then I added that last bit. So to clarify the last bit, I am with Rees in regards to exactly and only this:
“Because do you have any idea how much money that is??? That’s an insane amount of money.”
If I were to distill everything I have said, it would be to those two sentences.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I will not deny that. A $750,000 bonus (bonus!) is an awful lot of money.
March 27th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Let’s put the blame where is belongs: Eliza Shaftoe. She’s the one who invented the credit system to begin with!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_(Stephenson_character)
March 29th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I continue to maintain I’ve said my final word, but I thought because Taibbi is pretty regularly quoted around here that we might take a look at his thoughts on the subject:
That’s alotta sour grapes!
March 29th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
It’s the same argument as Rees made, and I don’t find it compelling. That is: I’ve had shitty things happen to me, and I haven’t complained, therefore, when something shitty happens to you, you shouldn’t complain. DeSantis says he got death threats so Rees counters that he got death threats, and didn’t bitch about it. The point is, PEOPLE SHOULDN’T GET DEATH THREATS. What’s the honor in getting a death threat and keeping it to yourself? So that later, when someone else gets a death threat and complains about it, you can say, “hey! I got a death threat and I didn’t complain! I’m more of a man than you are!”
If DeSantis is a bad, guilty asshole who deserves to be punished, then I fully support legal action against him. I maintain that it was interesting to read his insider’s perspective, and I can believe that there are people making shitloads of money on Wall Street who are not, at heart, bad people.