Phil Greenspun says fire AIG execs

One of the people whose opinions on current issues I always find compelling, is Phil Greenspun. Phil’s not afraid to look an issue in the mouth and tell us what the issue looks like to his informed eye, even if everyone else is calling it a non-issue or a gobydoggle. His insights are compelling because they’re reasoned with logic and are based on simple, verifiable facts. In a blog post yesterday Phil said

Fire the AIG management

AIG has been in the news again, this time for bleeding taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars to pay employee bonuses for a job well done in 2008. Most egregiously, the very division that bankrupted the company is sucking down $165 million in 2008 bonus. Is there some sort of contract that would require the company to pay these bonuses? The company essentially went bankrupt in the fall of 2008, though the U.S. governnment tried to avoid the actual word “bankruptcy”. When a company goes bankrupt, it doesn’t pay most of its obligations under old contracts and certainly does not pay bonuses to the employees who ran it into the ground (not for moral reasons but simply because it no longer has the cash). read more

Gift cards and store closings in 2008

An email is circulating advising people to be careful when buying gifts cards because many stores are closing.

“Stores that are planning to close after
Christmas are still selling the (gift) cards through the holidays even though
the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them
from doing this. On the contrary, it is referred to as ‘Bankrupcy
Planning)”

I always check announcements of this type out through a little web investigation. Here’s today’s crop of research. read more