When you start turning over rocks, there’s no telling what you might find crawling underneath.

I don’t know about AIG, but lots of “mark-to-market” was find when the market was paying a premium. Many extracted that premium which only existed on the books into their accounts.

They required the government to bail them out. It isn’t too much to ask if there were huge errors in the valuations that it be corrected on all sides.

No more than a huge sales bonus paid on orders that were all from friends that cancelled them on the first day of the next quarter after the bonus was paid.

In particular, *discretionary* payments are seen as first evidence of bankruptcy fraud (”take out” fraud).

Anyhow bonuses to CEOs, CFOs, vice presidents are usually owed on the basis of a formula related to profits; a very good argument can be made that those profits were misreported by the culprits and therefore the bonuses are simply not owed.

But hey, when so many years of so many company accounts were restated in the wave of accounting fraud cases a few years ago, were the bonuses paid on the basis of fraudulently reported profits clawed back?

Of course no, because CEOs and CFOs and vice presidents are the best and brightest, the most productive americans, and WINNERS take all!

As to that, I am still waiting to see a number of convictions for the massive income tax fraud achieved with backdated options, but fat chance of that.

1. “how much do you think a bank CEO makes per day/week” and

2. “who covers the fat guy’s salary under the bailout plan”

http://financialtraders.blogspot.com/2008/10/bank-bailout-and-executive-pay.html

PS: Answer to 2. is YOU!

The Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, inveighs against ‘exteme capitalism’ (exec. remuneration in finance sector) in today’s Fairfax press. (four days after the govt instituted a ‘full deposit insurance regime’ for a period of three years’).

And, APRA (our bank regulator) has gone on record to state that it is developing a model ‘not just for Australia, but also for review by the G20 and other international institutions, of how excessive compensation can be reigned in’

This is one for the zeitgeist. May we live in interesting times…

CrocodileChuck

NFW

Would be wonderful, but only happens in frank capra movies.

tomd

Thanks but the “Recent Posts” takes a while, sometimes a very long while, to update. I saw the typo in the title earlier and fixed it, but I don’t control “Recent Posts.” So apologies!

Comments from CR:

“
Yet, bailout plan guarantees banking CEO 70M salary!

http://www.marketwarnings.com/2008/10/bail-out-plans-and-ceo-salaries-lloyd.html