AIG: Are You Surprised?

AIG, better known as American International Group, is an insurance company that lost $61.7 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2008 - a new record - then got $170 billion dollars of taxpayer money to save it from going bankrupt.

A.I.G. then gave its top executives $165 million dollars in "bonus" pay. All the news outlets are talking about this with the appropriate amount of Hollywood outrage. But considering what has been going on in corporate culture, I don't see how anybody can be surprised by this anymore that they can be surprised by the car company executives flying in private jets to Washington, D.C., to ask for taxpayer bailout money.

What we're talking about here is arrogance created by "immunity from responsibility." The executives of corporations have spent years building defensive walls around themselves to protect themselves from legal prosecution of any kind. It's gotten to the point the average private citizen can't touch them if the corporation commits a wrong against them.

The basic structure of a corporation insures a citizen can sue the corporation for damages, but the executives cannot be sued for any wrongdoing. As outrageous as this is, it's not enough for the executives. They have built ever more defenses to protect themselves from liability.

A good one is "indemnification." That means if you sue a corporation, you have to pay for your attorney and the attorney for the corporation. This by itself makes filing a lawsuit against a corporation too expensive for the average citizen. Imagine if you go to court to have your case presented and the only thing you hear is the corporate lawyer ask for a postponement that will cost you $10,000 dollars in legal fees to have nothing done; the average guy cannot afford this.

If you sign a contract with a corporation, it most likely will have a clause something like this: "... The corporation can change the terms of this agreement at any time." That means you have made yourself a "slave" subject to the will of the corporation. They can now make you responsible for anything they want. They can say that if you want to sue them, you have to go to a courthouse on the other side of the country. They can say they want you to pay them $1,000 a day for any reason they can think of or require you to mow their lawn or paint the corporate headquarters.

Anything.

This sort of "open contract" is clearly bad for you, but great for the corporation.

Then there is the cozy relationship the corporations have with the government they use through their lobbyists to get favors. The average citizen doesn't have such a relationship with the government. They only get to vote every two to four years or by sending letters that are ignored, but the corporation lobbyists are there every day in smoke-filled back rooms.

Democracy, anyone?

This is why when the corporations got angry at the unions for raising the cost of labor to a living wage, they were able to use their government contacts to allow them to use cheap foreign labor to make products to sell in the higher-priced American market. They have the best of two worlds: cheap foreign labor and the high priced American market get the corporations some really big profit margins. That's why they have a dozen homes, 500-foot-long yachts and private jets. A million-dollar bonus is chump change to them.

Now, they have even more than immunity from prosecution. They have tax breaks and favored treatment from the government in laws that are passed; immunity from having to do anything at all. They can fail completely in the job they are supposed to do and still get multi-million dollar bonuses!

Isn't socialism wonderful!

Corporate culture has to change, they have to be made accountable for their actions. But then again, isn't "change" what Barack H. Obama was talking about?

I'm waiting.

Jose Lugo is a Community Emergency Response Team volunteer who lives in Spring Hill. He worked as an electrical engineer in New York for 37 years. He can be contacted at lugo@ddtv.org.