Not Enough Bullets: The Ever Reliable AIG

AIG is looking getting more US government aid to unload its dodgy assets because at this point it has only been able to unload about $1b in assets, and that money had to go to retention payments:

So far, AIG has announced sales of only a few smaller businesses that, at least based on deals where a sale price was announced, will earn it a little over $1 billion. That is about what AIG is paying employees in retention payments to keep them from leaving for rivals, which could further erode the value of its units.

They need to pay money to the the very people who ran the company into the ground, in an employment scenario where no one on Wall Street is hiring, because they are worried they might go somewhere else.

I'm not just referring to the people who actually sold insurance here, I'm referring to the people who actually set up the CDS catastrophe that took the company down:

American International Group Inc., the insurer saved from collapse by government money after losses on credit-default swaps, offered about $450 million in retention pay to employees of the unit that sold the derivatives, according to two people familiar with the situation.

About 400 workers at the financial products unit may get the money in two installments, said the people, who declined to be named because details of the payments were confidential. The business was responsible for about $34 billion in writedowns since 2007 as the market value of swaps AIG sold to banks plunged amid the subprime mortgage market collapse.

They are not just paying people who were passengers at some car wreck in another division, they are paying the driver of the car that crashed.

What's more, the driver was drunk, sending a text message, getting a blow job, and speeding at about 150 mph when they plowed into an orphanage.

Again, heads I win, tails you lose remuneration, bonuses to the tune of over a million dollars per employee to the folks who bankrupted the company.