Our taxes pay for AIG executive spa retreat!
Our bail out dollars are hard at work, saving the economy! I am so glad that my tax dollars are helping the insurance industry executives relax away their cares with luxury spa treatments. AIG executives took a $440,000 retreat in a luxury spa. The House Government Oversight Committee showed copies of invoices showing that the AIG spent more than $23,000 on spa treatments and nearly $150,000 on banquets at the resort.I am sure that the executives that got their company in such a mess were under a lot of stress. I guess a $85 billion bail out wasn’t enough to alleviate those sore necks.
Since the news broke, our law breakers are up in arms. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa. wrote a letter Thursday to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Kanjorksi complained about AIG’s $443,000 tab for the weeklong, late September stay at the St. Regis Monarch Bay resort and asked the Fed to take “immediate action to reclaim every penny” spent on the event.
In addition, the Federal Reserve agreed to provide an additional $ 37.8 billion credit line to AIG and its subsidiaries on Wednesday. I guess they need more money to cover their retreat costs.
AIG spokesman Joseph Norton said earlier this week that the California trip was a “recognition event” for independent insurance agents and their spouses, along with 10 AIG employees.
That is no excuse or rationale for that exorbitant spending. Have a pizza party at work or give them a plaque to recognize their sales. Obviously, they still aren’t selling enough insurance policies or the executives haven’t figured out how to manage the policies they do have. Yes, we had catastrophes world wide that are a blow to insurance companies. That means it is time to tighten belts, not loosen them after a huge extravagant meal!
Hear, hear! I too (in the UK) am outraged by such stories of unpardonable extravagance. We hear too of chief executives who draw massive bonuses after leading their companies to ruin.
Luckily - or maybe because I did see this all coming, I really did - I sold most of my equities before all this world financial disaster started. Debt seems to be taken for granted as necessary to keep an economy going. Why? This makes me think of the origin on the Futures market in England, thought to be the riskiest possible way of investing money. In the coffee houses of London, people put up cash to fund ships sailing out to the East to buy spices etc. Of course if the ship sank in a storm, they never got their money back, let alone the expected profit. This doesn’t seem any different to me from banks lending to businesses or house buyers in the hope of future returns.
Bean, apologies for the soap box rant. By the way, this soap box is a bit uncomfortable, as it is very wide and I can’t see the text I have written. The ends of the long lines disappear behind the sidebars. Maybe that is deliberate to encourage commenter to rant and rave and not care what they have said!! Maybe it’s a good thing for me too, as I am a dreadful tweaker.