When Greed Is Not Good

When Greed Is Not Good

That, as it turned out, was a misjudgment. When the big banks and insurance companies got bailed out by their governments in New York, and in London, the top executives nevertheless insisted on their bonus payments. AIG, probably the most incompetent financial company of all time, had to be bailed out to the tune of $160 billion, and yet its executives felt they were entitled to several hundred million dollars worth of bonus payments. Of course, these bonuses were small relative to the sums involved in the rescue of the bank, but they symbolized the unfairness better than anything else. Bankers were so incompetent that they had to be bailed out by the government, and then they rewarded themselves for their failure.