Remember earlier this year, when insurance company AIG was caught spending public bailout money to maintain outrageous corporate extravagances such as multimillion dollar bonuses for the very people who had led AIG into financial disaster? At the heat of public outrage at these abuses of trust, a whole bunch of AIG executives pledged to return the bonus money they had been given.
It was a great PR move. It sent the signal that AIG executives finally understood that public money provided through the bailout was not to play with, but to restore fiscal stability.
It was also a load of bull. Months later now, most of those executives still haven’t returned their millions of dollars of bonus money. They still say that they will return the money, though. Later. Some time.
