AIG Resignation Email Designed To Drum Up Support For Bonuses

March 29, 2009

The Facts

Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG, has made public the resignation email from Jake DeSantis, executive vice-president of AIG’s infamous financial products unit. The unit is well known as the one that brought AIG to its knees (or maybe more appropriately, its belly), then getting $165 million in bonuses paid out of taxpayer money.

The email is a “sob” letter from DeSantis. He’s quitting because the company has reneged on the bonus contract, and he’s “upset”.

My View

If anyone believes this is not a set up by Liddy and DeSantis, I have some of that well-known beach-front property in Arizona that I will practically give you. Just contact me for my ridiculously low price.

Of course DeSantis is resigning. He’s probably been on his way out for sometime now, only waiting for his bonus. But to make this email public has only one objective — to “prove” that what all those protectors of Wall Street have been saying is true; if we don’t pay them their bonuses, they’ll walk. When was the last time you’ve heard of a CEO publishing a resignation letter of an employee, let alone a senior executive? I’ll tell you — never! It’s just not done.

Now it doesn’t matter that us ‘stupid’ common folks know that is the reason for publishing the email. Its purpose will be well served by the time CNBC, Fox News, hundreds of politicians, and all others who believe that Wall Street should rule have finished exploiting the email. We have to remember that with them, the end justifies the means. And if ever exposed for its true purpose, it will be waved off with “that’s yesterday’s news, and nobody’s interested in that”.

Side Note: I just had to include this comment from one reader of the published email. “Hint: If your company accepts tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers, consider your bonus renegotiated.”