Personally I think this whole bit is just shenanigans on top of shenanigans. It's obvious that AIG is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how these bailouts are being misused by both the government and the corporate sector. I could care less about "their side of the story" or his personal drama.

What's the effect of this being published in the NYT? We're talking about it as if it matters. I say AS IF, because it really doesn't when you consider the larger picture: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/179622-Entropy-Chaos-and-Power-Part-1-

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It is obvious that Mr. DeSantis considered the bonus his salary and he took a chance that the compensation would be much higher than if he had bargained for a clear salary. Corporation executives like to talk in sports cliches. Mr. Desantis's team lost and he still wants a winner's share. If he can afford to work for one dollar a year than he can quit crying in his beer, recognize the extraordinary circumstances that his company's failures cast on the world and get on with his life.

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That money isn't Liddy's to give or DeSantis's to take. If he wants to give 100% of the money to "organizations who are helping people suffering from the global downturn" he can give it back to the U.S. government. No organization in the world is doing more to help people suffering from the global downturn.

One set of people it helped is at AIG. If the government hadn't appropriated billions for that purpose, AIG would be in bankruptcy right now and DeSantis would have no job to resign from, let alone a bonus to dispose of as he pleases.

Which is it, by the way? He agreed to work for one dollar, or he agreed to work for one dollar and another million-plus in bonus pay during a year the company has made no profit? He can't have it both ways. Was the one dollar a year thing a pure stunt? I applaud stunts, but only at Cirque du Soleil, not in the financial district.

This is portrayed as a retention bonus, but it’s not clear in that case why Mr. DeSantis was promised one at all. I watched Mr. Liddy’s testimony, in which the retention bonuses were described as efforts to retain – only temporarily – the executives in the company whose jobs were to be eliminated, who understood their own books of business, and were qualified to shed those junk securities as efficiently as possible on behalf of the company.

Mr. DeSantis says those people are already gone, and that he isn’t one of them. He’s at pains to say he comes from a different division, a profitable one, handling an entirely different type of business from credit default swaps. Why was his job ever endangered, and why did they give him a new one (at a one million dollar bonus) doing something he has never done before?

Although DeSantis may not have been one of the AIG executives who helped tank the economy, he might as well have been. His greed, hypocrisy, and utter lack of perspective are exactly the attitudes that put us in this recession.

He complains to unemployed people that he has been working long hours. He complains to homeless people that he fears protestors around his costly home. He complains to auto workers whose benefits have been wiped out at the insistence of the government that the government wants to renege on his employer’s commitment to give him a million dollars. He boasts to people whose 401K’s have been wiped out that he is donating three quarters of a million dollars to charity and quitting his job in the middle of a deep recession. And he demands the public’s sympathy.

I’m sure Mr. DeSantis is a dandy professional and a right clever man, but he’s not very clever at appealing for sympathy. When we bailed out the automakers we made it contingent on the loss of pay, bonuses, unemployment protections and health benefits by ordinary Joes on the assembly line. Mr. DeSantis's cleverness at creating value by manipulating commodities markets is impressive, but I find it unimpressive compared to the efforts of those who created real value by creating the commodities in the first place. The commodities themselves have value, no matter what.

If Mr. DeSantis didn't know that perfectly well, he wouldn't have wanted a million bucks to buy commodities like a second Porsche. He wasn't buying the cleverness of the guy who manipulated Porsche AG stock; he was buying a damned car.

While he complains of being resented, he might examine a little more closely the nature of his own resentments. He doesn’t seem as outraged with the former bad actors at AIG as he is with Mr. Liddy (another dollar a year man with no responsibility for AIG’s woes), the Attorneys General of New York and Connecticut, members of Congress, and the American taxpayers.

I’m sorry he’s been threatened with violence, but I hardly feel responsible for it simply because I am outraged at his demands. The same taxpayers who want the bonus money back not only paid that bonus, but are paying for the police who will keep him and his family safe. That protection -- another expense we didn't need -- wouldn't be necessary if he hadn't been greedy enough to land on the shame list.

Most of us aren’t thugs, and the worst thugs all left AIG with golden parachutes. He whines that those people have escaped blame, but he doesn’t exactly go on to blame them. They are former colleagues, and who knows, might be future employers.

This taxpayer would gladly work for a living wage (Mr. DeSantis no longer needs a wage, and could obviously retire any time he pleases) at any financial firm or law firm where sleeves are being rolled up to resurrect the American economy. It's my duty as an American, and I'd feel great about it even without a million dollar bonus. Thanks to AIG and other behemoths (and a lack of government oversight) I'm actually out of a job at a law firm instead.

But I’m still expected by Mr. DeSantis to pay him, from the taxes I’ve already paid, a huge sum promised him by a teetering company.

The invincible sense of entitlement of these people even in the middle of a deep recession -- not only to a lucrative job, not only to millions in bonuses at a failed company, but that these bonuses should be paid to them by the U.S. taxpayer -- is nothing short of amazing. The kind of gall it takes to write a Times op ed complaining about those who would deny you those bonuses could be used to strip Mr. DeSantis’s sun porch.

That he may not have helped cause the recession is sheer good luck on his part. That he should be rewarded for lending a helping hand in the crisis is quite just. I’d be just fine with his accepting a decent salary and forgoing the bonus. But he chose not to, and if a dollar isn’t enough incentive, perhaps he should consult his patriotism (if he has any loyalty not for sale) for a better one.

And as a longtime high level employee of a company whose practices have brought us to this pass, he might even consider taking on some of the shame. Shame is notably absent from his letter, save for that he wants to heap on others. I’m not taking delivery on it. Mr. DeSantis’s isn’t a private missive to Mr. Liddy or Andrew Cuomo, it’s an attack on anybody who feels Mr. DeSantis doesn’t deserve a million dollars. I’m unapologetic.

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I agree wholeheartedly with Anthony. Mr. DeSantis worked for $1 and expected to get a windfall as a bonus. Why not just work for a high negotiated salary (and the perks that go along with it at that level), and take his chances like everyone else. But greed gets in the way in Big Busiiness, doesn't it.

AIG has shown no remorse, no embarrassment at doing business so badly despite all these "valuable employees they can't afford to lose"/ Mr. D and the o9thers deserve to return these bonuses to the US taxpayers.

He took a chance and he lost. That's it in a nutshell.

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>Mr. Desantis's team lost and he still wants a winner's share.< You don't get it. It's a binding contract. Nobody flips out when Barry Bonds packs in 20 million for a team with a losing season. Why? Because the basis of all fairness is the rule of law. The reason they worked for bonuses is because it gives them more freedom, financially. It's the rules of the game, just like signing bonuses for people like Brian Bosworth. This is just a smoke screen to allow the government to operate more and more like a fascist state - where you get to own things, but the government gets to dictate what you will do with them. (Not being pejorative, that really is the definition of fascism.)

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Fact is, if the government didn't bail them out, they would have claimed bankruptcy and no one would have gotten a dime in bonuses. Now, they are all pissed because they are not getting money. Boo hoo. They should be glad they have a job. Consider that your bonus. It's insult to injury to bail their butts out and then see their lavish business meetings and bonuses met out. Once you accepted money from the government because you couldn't figure out how to run a company successfully, then you accepted the fact that you don't get bonuses. Fact is, everyone who had half a brain could see they were setting themselves up for failure. Did they care? No. They wanted immediate money. Greed.

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Yea, I'm like you guys that think doling out bonuses with taxpayer money was a slap in the face. But you need to realize the bonus money given out was a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars that AIG gave to foreign banks (like 66 billion) and around 44 billion in the U.S. As long as our attention was directed at the outrage of bonuses to AIG execs there was no clamoring of accountability concerning these other huge amounts that were passed around. Hey I even emailed AIG to see if they would like to contribute to my monetary ( or lack of ) situation. Guess what, no return email or money.

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I REALLY DONT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT ANY OF THESE LEECHES. IM READY TO LOSE MY HOUSE AND WIND UP IN THE STREET ALONG WITH MILLIONS OF OTHERS. AND THE ROTTEN BANKS ? THEY COULD CARE A SHIT LESS.

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I suppose that every poster here knows what every division in their company is doing, every meeting is completely honest, no one is overly optimistic about catching one or two breaks to get back on top.
It seems that we all want to blame every one at AIG for one division that was very,very profitable for quite a while.
This man, in charge of another still profitable division, when told about cash shortfalls, agreed to reduce his salary to take his salary off the books tohelp with the accounting, I am sure.
Knowing that he was entitled to a bonus based on his divisions performance, he was obviously hedgeing his bets.
Now, we insist that he give that bonus back, thereby making his only compensation for running a profitable division for a struggling company with admittedly greedy ethics, with even greedier investors,(ie. all of us who hold stocks through individual stocks, or those of us with 401k who depend on these companies profits to fund our retirements), ONE DOLLAR.
If this was Somalia, we could drag his body through the streets like animals, and then the people would surely find happiness.
But oh, how happy are we that some wealthy man has had hard times too.
As a man working in the construction field, I can let you know, that in hard times, regular people arent building, they are saving in case it gets worse. Wealthy people are not throwing money away, but they also are not memorizing every serial number on their money, either.
We are being distracted, and look, it is working

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