wall-street-protest

Just in time to get you in the holiday spirit, we’ve got this report from Wall Street:

NEW YORK – Five senior executives at American International Group told the insurer last week they may quit if their compensation was cut significantly by the U.S. pay czar, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The five senior AIG executives indicated on December 1, in written notices, that they were prepared to leave by year-end, the paper report, citing unnamed sources. Two of them changed their minds over the weekend, the paper added.

Once . . . just ONCE . . . I’d love to hear HR say, “Y’know what? Here’s a box for your belongings, and there’s the exit. Have a rotten life, you miserable scumbag. You brought this upon yourself with your insatiable greed and frankly, we don’t really care if you live or die.” Okay, sure, the company would get its kiester handed to it in court, but for just one moment, it would be so very satisfying.

It’s hardly surprising that these mewling, craven jerks work for AIG, the criminal enterprise at the heart of the global financial meltdown that received a mere pittance of $182 billion from the American taxpayers as punishment for its miserable failures. Once again, this is the way they say “thanks for bailing out our lying, amoral, cheating, scoundrel asses” — by blackmailing the company government into keeping them for their obviously unimpeachable sense of decorum and flawless business judgment. Hell, it’s worked so far for their boss, the Godzilla of rent seekers, Robert Benmosche, who threatened to walk after 12 weeks on the job (the first 2 of which were spent vacationing at his villa on the coast of Croatia) because he would no longer get to decide who lives and who dies at AIG (even though he would still get his $7 million plus annual salary).

Sigh. I suppose that when your mansion is large enough to house the entire population of Andorra, your parties feature statuaries pissing Dom Perignon, and you are the de facto puppetmaster of the U.S. Treasury, your sense of entitlement might get a little warped.

Meanwhile, in the 5th wealthiest county in the nation, the homeless shelters are seeing a new sort of inhabitant — white collar workers:

Hall said these homeless people may have fallen into dire financial straits for any number of reasons, such as salary cuts, unexpected illness, or the layoff of a spouse, said Joann Bjornson, executive director of the Interfaith Council for Homeless Families of Morris County. They quickly may find that they can’t pay their mortgage, taxes or household expenses.

I wonder whether an arrogant, swinging-dick type like Morgan Stanley’s Vice-Chair, Rob Kindler, whose license plate on his Porsche Cayenne Turbo reads 2Big2Fail, worriedly contemplates the shockwaves of this fallout from the Bankster Follies? After all, the nad-meisters at Goldman Sachs have taken up arms to protect themselves against a “populist uprising” at their personal Bastilles in Greenwich and Darien.  Yes, Rob, nothing quite says “I care” to the little people like a customized plate that rubs their noses in the big, steaming pile of garbage you created.

We’ll just have to see what happens if Congress reconstructs enough spinal cartilage to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. It’d be one way to mitigate any future disasters these MOTU mofos create. In the interim, may “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg find the strength to tell these WATBs that if they don’t like it, there are plenty of homeless shelters that could use volunteers this holiday season.