How angry are you about bonuses?
NRC Handelsblad’s Freek Staps joined a tour of angry Americans on a name-and-shame tour of the affluent houses of AIG executives. Like a majority of Americans they are outraged about the bonuses paid out to AIG executives despite a government bailout of the firm.
They have the blessing of president Barack Obama, who recently said: “I don’t want to quell anger – I think people are right to be angry. I am angry.”
In the Netherlands, Obama’s words are echoed by finance minister Wouter Bos who said last week:”I am just as irritated, frustrated and angry as every other person in the Netherlands who just doesn’t understand this.”
Bos has called ING’s initiative to make a ‘moral appeal’ to 1,200 top executives to return their 2008 bonuses “a good beginning but not enough”. He is working on extra measures to curtail the bonus system.
How do you feel about the bonuses being paid to executives in the financial sector?
Monday 23 March 2009, 20:40
I have been angry because of the onslaught of unbridled (and unchallenged) capitalism in the last decades, and I resent the consequential demise of collective responsibility, but I would certainly not go the houses of AIG executives, outing them as money grabbers. What’s new or exceptional, that is so shocking? Mob lynching parties are not my cup of tea, but where was all this anger over capitalist greed and ruthless selfishness before? And how can you single out individuals, when we are all to blame for facilitating such behaviour?
When I focus my anger, I get George Bush in sight, for he indeed is individually to blame for many of the wrongs in the world today, including this financial crisis. But then again, he was voted into power by the very same mob that now takes to the streets in anger. The mob had a major change of heart, so it seems, and over this I cannot be angry, over this I rejoice, since a general change of mentality is precisely what was needed.
President Obama may not want to temper our anger, but the fact that he was voted into the Oval Office has already tempered my anger substantially. Since then, Obama has made a start in putting the urgently needed bridles on capitalism. Hopefully he will continue in this new direction and keep a fairly tight reign.
Tuesday 24 March 2009, 9:52
Tough times. So far Bos is all talk and no action. It is time to stop suggesting the return and/or cancellation of executive bonuses. It is time to forbid them. No need for the wealthy to pay no penalty while the rest of us pay the price of this crisis.
Come on, Bos. Stand up for the common folk!
Friday 3 April 2009, 13:00
The point is that most of the bonusses being paid are actually part of people’s salaries for doing their jobs. I see most of these people as sprockets of a larger machine. The sprocket simply has to do its job but does not know what the machine that it is part of does (exacly).
In a less general way I do agree and would even demand back any bonusses conceived on monies having been made by constructing the mortgage deals that are responsible for the current market melt-down.