And by his own account, he worked extremely hard and earned the bonus. If you have some evidence to the contrary, present it.

What I'm reacting to is the mindless mob mentality in this whole thread. Yes, let's lynch any AIGer we can get our hands on! HEY! There's one now!

Never mind that this is a massive organization, and that it's completely plausible that a vice president in one department would have no idea what's going on in another department. I work in an office of about 40 people, and I couldn't tell you what half of them do, let alone answer for the manner in which they do it. But by all means, gnash your teeth and jab your pitchfork in the air if it makes you feel better.

http://open.salon.com/blog/spasek/2009/03/25/dear_jake_desantis_dont_let_the_door_hit_you_on_the_ass

He is not being judged so much because he made a lot of money. He is being judged because what he sold was worse than something of no value, it was destructive and injured other people (financially). If an MIT education isn't enough to teach someone to evaluate the product they are selling, then there is something fundamentally wrong with that product. Just because he didn't know that, doesn't entitle him to keep the money he received from selling sh*t throughout the his career.

If he were selling the cure for cancer that someone invented, that would be a little different. But he wasn't. He was selling sh*t. These products were sh*t. Nobody should profit from selling sh*t, whether they knew or not is beside the point. They were selling sh*t.

& yeah ok sure

of course people disagree. i disagree that greed is good. there is no "lack of a better word" for describing it; greed is not good but devastating to the victims and ultimately, or so i like to imagine, the perpetrators too. if there IS a God.

that 'greed is good line', in my opinion, has gotten this country where it is today. and where are we today?

i wonder if you live in the same world or travel the same roads as me. and i think, naw. nope. you don't, not if you really believe that greed is good.

today i look around me and i see this country is not even close to the one i was led to believe in, and to feel a part of; what the hell is this op-ed writer talking about?

who is he. to be published in a major newspaper to cry and whine at the american people - that he had nothing to do with the utter calamity we see has happened; that he has worked hard to FIX it. and his overwhelming generosity compels him to give away over seven hundred thousand dollars, just like that.

why don't i believe him?

we are being told that the only people who can help us are the very ones who drove us into the ground in the first place. this is nonsensical to me.

are we are to feel pity for them, for him? for this pompous ass who quits his job, writes an op-ed piece then keeps the bonus he should never have received (AFTER TAXES) in the first place, to decide on a charity of his choice to donate said money. oh hold me back, from this weird feeling it may go to his local polo team.

it shouldn't be termed greed if a person thirsts for knowledge, unless said person covets and then steals from his neighbors' bookcase.

knowledge is power and ordinary people like me are seeing that used to its' worst degree, and it smells like greed, walks like greed, and talks like greed to me.

if i saw this guy in person & he was crying on his knees about how he didn't have a thing to do with what all went on down the hall from him, i'd slap him sillier than he already is.

tell him to not let the door hit him on the way out; and he should maybe take a skiing vacation just to, you know, get away from it all.

The WSJ article was hilarious.

It's like listening to tapeworms who've just realized a high colonic is on the way bemoaning the intestine's lack of gratitude.

Capitalists and investors are theives, pure and simple, and should be spurned as one would spurn a pack of rabid dogs.

The Revolution can't get here soon enough for me.

What you said was mean spirited and petty and you owe the man an apology. Given that you accept what he said was true, and I won't personally call a man a liar unless I either have known him to be a liar or somebody shows him to be a liar, what did the man do? He overcame a suboptimal childhood, got into a good school, obviously did well considering his position, and went out into the world to make a living as a financier. How is this drastically different than another kid I know of who overcame a suboptimal childhood, got into a good school, obviously did well considering his position, and went into the world to make a living as a lawyer, author, and politician? Aside, of course, from the career choices. Being a financier doesn't make him unclean and you've accepted that he wasn't one of those guys playing fast and loose with CDSs.

So what happened to this guy? Like everybody else in the country who had money invested in the market, he lost his shirt. Being a financier, he may well have had his pants in the market as well so he lost those as well. So now he's working for $1 plus minus bonus all the while plausibly working himself out of a job. All of this is happening not because of something he did but because of something somebody else did. On top of all that, he has all this political crap coming down on him.

Do I feel sorry for him? Yeah, I do.

He did what millions of others across this land have done to try to earn a good living. He had it (in spades) and he lost it. I feel sorry for everyone who has lost a paycheck out if this. Why shouldn't I feel sorry for him? But what puts it over the top is the political opprobrium. What the hell did he do to deserve it? The answer, of course, is nothing other than having worked for AIG. Nonetheless, because he made more money than you do, you can blow right past his huge losses (bigger than most since most of his holdings would have been AIG which isn't doing well) saying that he "blithely" quit (most people I know who blithely do something don't put it in an op-ed in the NYT. That's also not an adverb normally associated with walking away from 12 years with a company) and since he can easily afford to part with a completely inaccurate amount of after tax bonus money, he's still in the elite and therefore deserving no sympathy. Not, of course, that you actually know that he can afford to part with that money....

Like I said, mean spirited and petty.