Atlas Shrugged ?

(Editor’s Note : The title is the comment a friend made while forwarding to me the letter sent earlier this week by JakeDesantis, an executive vice-president of AIGs financial products unit, to Edward M.Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G. The letter, or the link to it, has been forwarded and quoted so many times in the last few days that I have no doubt that you, regular reader, have read it already. Here is the link for the occasional visitor who might not be as well informed.
The post below is an anonymous contributor’s reaction to the issue)

The morality of the payments is not really debatable at all, they're perfectly moral besides being legal. And before anyone tries to lynch me, allow me to explain why. It’s not that difficult .... the top three reasons are

1) They have a contract
2) They have a contract
3) They have a contract

It’s as simple as that, and the rest is just banana republic politics and plain thuggery. For eg ., since all this is related to financial markets, let’s just compare this to the simplest kind of financial instrument .. a forward contract ( as opposed to all those dastardly derivatives that are being blamed for this mess). Let’s say a year back you and I entered into a contract that in one years time, I would buy from you 1 ounce of gold in return for USD 1250 (basically a forward contract) . One year hence, i.e. today, I find that the price of that one ounce in the market is say USD 1000, and so I try to default on my contract with you to push that loss of $250 onto you. Now these are the arguments I would like to give to justify this:-

1) I will default because I can now buy that ounce in the market for $1000, so why should I pay you $1,250 - Go find someone else willing to buy it from you at $1250; Essentially this is what the US government wants to do when they say "Don’t pay them ....let’s see where they can get this kind of money in the current market " .

2) Someone else also made me pay USD 250 extra for a ton of oranges that I bought from them, so I intend to recover it from you. I don’t care if you have never eaten an orange in your life or are allergic to them ....you are all part of this nefarious conspiracy against me. Again, as per the govt's stand, no distinction is necessary between different people performing different functions, working in different markets or even working in different organizations ...go after them all and tax them @ 90%

3) During the course of the year I lost a lot of money in my other dealings in gold, hence I refuse to pay you because you also deal in gold. Like the govt saying that the very people who got us into the mess cannot be paid,without regard to any attempt to distinguish between people, like they're all one big faceless mass.

4) You fooled / tricked / conned me into entering into this contract a year ago ! You should never have done this deal with me! I, a poor innocent have become a victim to your fiendish, devilish intents. That’s right , poor little AIG , this 120,000 strong leading insurance company was "fooled" into entering into employment contracts that guaranteed a certain level of payments irrespective of what happened in the market . Poor folks, looks like they were operating without an HR dept, lawyers, out of some tin shack somewhere and just didn’t understand what they were doing.

5) There's too much poverty in Zimbabwe for me to honor this contract. Aka US Govt ...when people are losing jobs, they should be happy to have a salary and work for free ! We are suddenly all part of a national / world / universal community interested in zen and the art of collective peace !

6) Ok, ok; i shall honour this contract and buy from you at $1250, provided that you deposit $250 in my unmarked swiss account. Aka let them have their bonus, we'll tax it @ 100% ! Sneer Sneer- What’s that - What do you mean where does that tax money go ? Don’t be impertinent.

7) I am bankrupt- get in line with the others to recover your dues! Well, AIG was bankrupt wasn’t it . No wait a minute, we had to save it from bankruptcy under which btw, like any other creditors employees too would have NOT received any of their outstanding bonuses and perhaps not their salary also. However, it was decided to save it and its creditors + employees for the "greater good of the system" ....oops , but now I find I harbour animosities towards a select few, some of those evil millions of bonuses types , and so what the heck, let’s just declare "selective bankruptcy" , sort of like selective memory which will enable me to continue to pay some but not others at the mercy of my whims and fancies . Ain’t life great ! :-)

8) Stop whining - I am doing it because I CAN. And that’s really at the heart of this isn’t it ...I suddenly find myself able to cater to my worst instincts and renege on my word under the guise of taxpayer interests, morality, and other pithy homilies with one finger on a metaphorical trigger. And therefore I shall !

By,
Anonymous.