Wrong target

This is exactly what I was concerned about in my last blog post about the AIG bonuses and why I thought our collective rage was not going to suit us well. In our haste to punish somebody for the inequities we all despise (including myself), we are not thinking and as a result are punishing the wrong people. The link is to a letter from an AIG exec to Liddy, and it is his resignation (it was published on the NY Times Op Ed page Tuesday). You really should read it. Seriously. Here it is again.
Here are a couple of quotes:

"I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage."

"As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house."

And from the WSJ opinion journal:

"There is not a shred of justice in the hysteria that followed. As AIG chief Ed Liddy explained on the Hill last week, the people receiving retention bonuses were not the same people who launched AIG's unhedged housing bets that brought the company down. Those people were gone. Their pay is already being clawed back.

Those who remained had been asked a year ago to stay and work themselves out of a job. In accepting the terms offered to them, they committed no offense (say, failing to pay taxes). Their only crime was possessing marketable knowledge -- all the more marketable because of the opportunity for hedge funds and other counterparties to profit from AIG's distress. Had the company submitted to Chapter 11 rather than a government takeover, a bankruptcy judge might well have authorized identical incentives to minimize losses and maximize recovery for legitimate stakeholders."

The people we are are trying to punish are not the people who caused the mess. The people whose children are being threatened, who are being urged to commit suicide, who are being stalked by an entire country? Oops - wrong guys, folks. We are behaving irrationally. And no, I don't really feel sorry for this guy - his salary is likely more than I make over several years. However, so are the salaries of most professional athletes. Inequities are everywhere. Picking one example of an inequity to crush into oblivion does absolutely nothing to fix the problem and is simply unjustifiable. Having the employees who have been working to get us OUT of the AIG mess leave the company ultimately does nothing but hurt AIG AND the U.S.

That deep breath and a step back are still in order. Lynchmob mentality is a scary thing.