Believe it, or not, there's a rich man you don't want to be right now. More specifically, it would suck to be one of the AIG derivative traders who received big bonuses.
It was reported that at least one of them received a death threat.
But that's not all. It seems like everyone, especially Congress, wants to know who got paid how much. They want the identities of the recipients to be made public.
Now, I'm going to leave it to my fellows to discuss how the whole AIG mess happened and whether or not the bonuses should or should not have been paid out in the first place. I will say this much; after listening to explanations as to why AIG's CEO scrambled to retain certain employees, I'm more open-minded on the matter.
What troubles me more is the idea that what you make (your salary and bonus) may be a matter of public record, that is unless your employer takes great care in making employee compensation records a trade secret.
Here's what a New York state judge decided yesterday in reference to disclosing the bonus pay-outs to Merrill employees before the Bank of America takeover:
At a time like this, I'm sure many of us are in favor of full-disclosure; we think that it's OK for the compensation packages of people we see as greedy to be made a matter of public record.
But what about you? Would it be OK if your take home pay was published on the Internet? (Public records will live in the cloud pretty soon). Do you care if a nosy neighbor or coworker could do a web search and get the skinny on your earnings? Relax, I don't think that can happen quite yet, but recent events cause me to wonder whether that might not become the case in the future. After all, Merrill and AIG execs will soon be exposed, if they aren't already.
That leaves me wondering if I have the right to keep my earnings private (aside for the IRS, of course.)
Comments