Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Bankruptcy

Okay, question. Since when are bonuses contracted? Fuck me, I bet most of these guys are at-will employees anyway. Fire the lot of them! En tout cas:

If you think this economy is a mess now, imagine what it would look like if the business community started to worry that the government would start abrogating contracts left and right.
Yes. Imagine what the economy would look like if failed companies entered Chapter 11. Abrogated contracts! Lawdy.

13 comments:

Montag said...

something tells me union contracts would be a different story.

bill said...

Bonuses, or at least the conditions under which they are to be paid, can easily be "contracted." [Strange usage, but still.] But what court would be willing to uphold these particular contractual rights? Particularly since at least the implicit condition upon which those rights are based -- that AIG continues to be a viable entity, with the funds necessary to pay the bonuses -- has failed, primarily due to the mis/malfeasance of the parties seeking to enforce those rights.

Blakenator said...

If I am correctly reading the linked article, the case for eating this turd is to keep the "real moneymakers" employed. I think a good place for them would be in "prison industries" somewhere.

Brian said...

Montag: Most certainly. The same newspaper burbling prettily about the "rule of law" for the CEOs and their gluttony had an article about a court decision allowing a bankrupt neighboring city to abrogate all of its union contracts. Guess those contracts are not as sacred.

Anonymous said...

something tells me union contracts would be a different story.

jesus christ. yes, the poor unions. the poor poor unions. they would never get special treatment or treated with deference. there is a whole fucking cottage industry of half-baked Death of the Middle Class® pundits from the last time someone fucked with union contracts "willy-nilly"

Montag said...

what about the toe?

Anonymous said...

what about the arm?

Anonymous said...

speaking of the AIG bonuses...

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/dodd-cracks-aig---time/

was there ever a company, government, and nation that deserved each other more?

Anonymous said...

A lot of these "bonuses" are just dressed up commissions. Contingent pay that vests in the employee upon contractually agreed upon happenings. Just because they use the unfortunate term "bonus" doesn't make them any less enforceable. And one of the more rock solid requirements for a corporation to avail itself of bk protection from contractual obligations is that it, you know, file for bankruptcy.

YF

Anonymous said...

i'm rather enjoying all the outrage. we gave an obviously insolvent company hundreds of billions of dollars, and those CEO's actually had the audacity to take some of it?!

Thomas Paine said...

Sorry, but I don't buy the "commission" analogy -- every executive bonus I have ever seen in my 30+ years in the corporate world is non-contractual -- they always have some outs, including the financial status of the entity.

Anonymous said...

In 30 years you've never seen a single executive bonus structured to vest upon a company hitting ebitda goals? That I find hard to believe. I have no idea what the terms were in the AIG bonus contracts, but to state that bonus recipients are never legally entitled to their deferred compensation is just incorrect.

YF

Anonymous said...

Well, at least Ross got this right:
'we're all going to have to swallow hard'
Sic that.

Mike