As a follow-up to a post last week, I’ve been wondering what Jamie Dimon thinks of the AIG situation this week.  Demonization of corporate America, Jamie?  Where the hell would that possibly come from?

Here is what bothers me about this whole issue of AIG bonuses.  I’m not particularly angry, maybe because every week it seems there is something to be mad about.  A couple of months ago it was the heads of the Big Three flying to Washington on their private jets to beg for bailout money.  Last week it was the Jon-Stewart-versus-Jim-Cramer smackdown.  Now I’m just tired.  Call it outrage fatigue.

What gets on my nerves is the utter cluelessness of AIG from a public relations standpoint.  I’m certainly no apologist for these guys and if I were a PR flack for that company I would probably have put my head through a wall by now.  How on earth could these guys go ahead with this plan and not think about the firestorm of bad press that would ensue?  How do you look at the job figures for the last couple of months, all those middle and lower class folks losing their jobs, and still justify to yourself multi-million dollar bonuses, knowing that the reckless gaming of the financial markets your employees engaged in is at least partially responsible for this recession?  Does no one over there read a newspaper or have access to the Internet?  Or a soul?

Yeah I know, the company signed contracts guaranteeing these bonuses and “outside legal counsel” informed AIG they could be liable if the payouts did not happen.  Fine.  Make all these employees get together and hire lawyers to come after the money.  Even if you know you will lose.  Have the decency to go down swinging.

Or renegotiate the contracts.  Tell your employees that bonuses right now when you have taken billions upon billions in taxpayer-financed bailouts might look a tad shabby, for them as well as for you.  Tell them you still intend to make good on the bonuses, but you will do it quietly, in a few months, when the economy is hopefully in better shape and the press is not reminding everyone every day that you are a bunch of incompetent fuck-ups. 

Hell, at the very least start paying back the money you got through TARP first.  Once you are making regular payments there you can slip through the bonuses and no one will care.  You can spin it as bonus money for people who stuck with the company through bad times and helped it get back on its feet.  Our political leaders will be way less inclined to wag their fingers and suggest you commit hari-kari if they think you are paying off your debt to the taxpayers in good faith.

Having been the beneficiary of a couple of retention bonuses in the past (though for much smaller amounts) I can understand the justification for this kind of compensation.  A couple of years ago I worked for a company that decided to close down it’s L.A. office.  They offered me a retention bonus of 25% of my salary to stick around for nine months while the business was slowly shut down and partly transferred to the main office in Seattle.  Now, one could argue that as an employee of that company I bore my share of responsibility for our inability to make the business work.  But my experience and knowledge of the company was valued highly enough that I was given this bonus as an incentive to not immediately go look for a new job, while dozens of others in my office were being let go.

The difference is, that company produced and licensed cell phone ringers and graphics.  We were not playing around with mortgages and retirement funds.  We did not fail because of reckless business practices and nearly take down other multi-national corporations at the same time.

One of my pet peeves is people who do not seem to think the rules should apply to them.  For example, I’ve been on many airplanes where people turned on cell phones mid-flight to check messages, or were still gabbing away as the plane hurtled down the runway.  My feeling is always, hey, I turned off my phone, jackass, as did everyone else on the plane.  I don’t know how valid the fear is that phones can mess with a plane’s instruments.  Maybe it is total bullshit the airlines use as cover to prevent the air rage one might feel if trapped in a cramped seat while the oblivious idiot in the next seat babbles on and on about her yeast infection.  You know how annoying it is to be stuck in an elevator for a couple of minutes with someone gabbing away on a cell?  Imagine being stuck with that person for six hours, jammed into coach, as you fly from Boston to L.A.

That is where these clowns at AIG come in.  By taking these bonuses, they set themselves apart from the current zeitgeist of economic anxiety.  They are telling the rest of us that the rules do not apply to them, that we as Americans are not in fact in this mess together.  AIG is that passenger in 17C cooing to his girlfriend over his cell while the rest of us grip our armrests and pray.  They are the wealthy grabbing lifeboat seats on the Titanic while the passengers down in steerage aren’t even allowed to come up on deck. 

And yet I am not all that angry.  I am more…resigned.  Resigned to the selfishness of human beings.  Resigned to their cluelessness, their douchebaggery.  I’m disappointed once again in humanity’s indifference to itself.

This is not to set myself up as some sort of paragon of virtuousness and charity.  I’m far from that.  And I’m sure some fine folks in our country (hell, here on OS) consider me a socialist, a commie, a clueless Marxist, an anti-capitalist, a naïve dope who will be happiest when Obama forces us all to live and work on collectives and hand everything over to the state.  I’m not going to waste my energy engaging those folks.  I believe in the sentiment behind the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats.”  Particularly right now, at this moment in history, we need even the high and exalted titans of finance to keep their boats in the water.