US Senator: AIG execs should consider suicide
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A prominent US Senator has suggested that top executives of the bailed-out insurer AIG ought to quit or kill themselves, which he described as the Japanese model of honorably taking responsibility.
Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told a radio station in his home state of Iowa that the insurance giant's shamed leaders had stoked public anger with lavish bonuses.
"The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them [is] if they would follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I'm sorry and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," Grassley told WMT radio.
"In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology," he said after AIG awarded some 165 million dollars in bonuses -- going largely to the same London-based traders who brought ruin to the firm.
American International Group has received 180 billion dollars in rescue funding from taxpayers, but a backlash has grown amid reports of lavish parties and, now, bonuses.
"The attitude of these corporate executives and bank executives, and most of them are in New York, that somehow they're not responsible for their company going into the tank," Grassley said.
"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," he said.
AIG was deemed to be too big to fail, given the complex ties it built with financial institutions worldwide through so-called credit default swaps linked to the tanking property market.
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