AIG News

By Dan Rattiner

Posted 4/1/09

The old rule on Wall Street is that traders place bets with somebody else's money and the somebody else pays a commission even if the bet fails. The traders still gets paid because what the guy with the money bought was the traders' expertise. You win some, you lose some.

The new rule, as thought up by our president, is that when the bet fails huge and the guy with the money has to bring in his relatives to make up what he has lost, the relatives don't want the traders to make anything.

Not quite understanding this new rule, the traders at AIG, after getting paid several hundred trillion by the relatives, do business as usual by paying out multi-million dollar bonuses to the traders who caused the loss.

And so, the relatives call in the goons. The goons first ask nicely for the traders to give the bonuses back. And when they don't, the goons get ugly. Threats are made over the phone, some of them concerning the future general welfare of the health of the traders. The traders, now scared, return the seven figure bonuses, and then, for good measure, go into the Witness Protection Program by erasing their name over the entrance of the big skyscraper they own on Wall Street and putting on another name.

This happened last week. The skyscraper, which said AIG over the door, is at 175 Water Street in Manhattan. The new name over the door, in stainless steel, is AIU. AIG? The old name up there? Never heard of them. Used to own this building, maybe. I think I remember some of those guys.

An executive in the building, when asked why the lettering over the front door was changed, said it was done in the interest of staff safety.

Also, it does save money, only having to have pay for one new piece of stainless steel instead of three.

Thus do new rules get learned.