I Would Call It Hubris

by digby

… if they ever, ever had to pay a price for their overweening arrogance:

How much will it cost the American International Group to keep its chief executive to help stabilize the troubled insurer? At least $7 million a year. A.I.G. disclosed Monday in a regulatory filing that it would pay Robert H. Benmosche, 65, the former head of MetLife, $3 million a year in cash and $4 million in stock. Mr. Benmosche will also be eligible for up to $3.5 million in stock as part of an incentive plan, A.I.G. said in a regulatory filing. The pay package has received preliminary approval by Kenneth R. Feinberg, the administration official in charge of overseeing compensation for top executives at seven large firms bailed out by the federal government, according to the regulatory filing. Mr. Benmosche will receive significantly more than the dollar a year earned by his predecessor, Edward M. Liddy, a former head of Allstate who came out of retirement to try to turn A.I.G. around after it received $182 billion in government aid. The government now owns nearly 80 percent of the company. (Mr. Liddy, however, received about $460,000 to compensate for air travel, housing and other expenses.) Mr. Liddy, who unlike Mr. Benmosche also held the title of chairman, described his job at A.I.G. as public service, one where he was charged with reshaping the company after its near-collapse last fall. Under him, the company began exploring deals to sell assets in hopes of repaying some of the hundreds of billions of dollars it received from the government. This month, A.I.G. reported its first quarterly profit since 2007, though Mr. Liddy warned that the insurance businesses “remain challenged.” But Mr. Liddy was criticized by Congress for paying retention bonuses to people in its financial products unit, the division that sold the credit-default swaps that nearly brought A.I.G. to financial ruin. He was not in charge when those contracts were struck. He has said that A.I.G. would need to pay his successor significantly more in order to retain a well-qualified individual.

I suppose that means he thinks he’s taking a 50% pay cut.

This is sickening. This is essentially a publicly owned company. And yet, for some reason, the only people I ever hear complaining about all this are the tea baggers. Are they wrong?

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