I feel like this should be a bigger deal

by Will on September 30, 2009

From last week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback:

Meanwhile, previous AIG CEO Edward Liddy repeatedly said he was working “for $1 a year.” He asserted this on “60 Minutes” and in sworn congressional testimony, and was broadly praised for his dollar-a-year service. Now it turns out he was lying.

AIG quietly said Liddy received $38,368 for a New York apartment, $47,578 for personal airline flights, $31,348 for car services and $180,431 “to cover tax obligations.” In what sense are these not income? You work at a job in order to be able to pay for your housing and transportation. You must earn income to pay your taxes; nobody pays them for you. If AIG was paying for Liddy’s housing, personal travel and taxes, then he wasn’t earning $1 a year. Yet he lied through his teeth about this and got away with it. That’s the core lesson of corporate scandals — the CEOs tell lies, pocket cash and never pay any penalty. What does this encourage? More CEO lying.

{ 3 comments }

1 Jaybird September 30, 2009 at 7:35 am

Yeah. HP recently had something similar. “Everybody gets a haircut!” was the attitude. Upper got a 15% cut, middle got a 10%, and lower got a 5% cut. (Something like that, upper may have gotten 20%… it was similar to that, though.)

And then it came out that upper’s *BONUSES* were untouched. If the CEO makes only 2 million a year (or whatever) and it gets cut to 1.6 million but still gets a $24 million bonus?

Well, it doesn’t exactly communicate to middle and lower that everybody, in fact, got that aforementioned haircut.

2 North September 30, 2009 at 7:42 am

Lord it’s crap like this that makes the left wingers sound halfway reasonable.

3 Dave September 30, 2009 at 8:25 am

Lord it’s crap like this that makes the left wingers sound halfway reasonable.

10% at best.

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