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House panel has former AIG execs on the carpet

October 7th, 2008, 11:15 am · 7 Comments · posted by Dena Bunis, Washington Bureau Chief

The House may be on a recess to go home and campaign but Los Angeles Democrat and chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform committee Henry Waxman is holding a hearing right now on the the federal bailout of AIG.

Among other things, the members of Congress are outraged about something you all heard from Teri Sforza on here O.C. Watchdog blog - the opulant conferece at the St. Regis Monarch resort.

Well, Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, questioned two former CEOs - there seem to be a lot of former AIG CEOs these days - Martin Sullivan and  Robert Willumstad- about the party. Cummings even got his staff to get the bill from this junket. Among the many charges, he said, were $7,000 for greens fees, $10,000 for “leisure dining” which he said they were told was drinking and $1,400 in the spa salon.

When asked whether the people who approved this trip should be fired, Sullivan, who was gone months before, said he’d have to know the circumstances. Maybe, he said, the officials at this AIG subsidiary thought the trip was needed to “calm down” the staff after all the turmoil.

Willumstad, who left just a week before the conference, said he had no idea it was happening.

Check out Teri’s full blog post on this. And if you want to watch the hearing, check it out at C-Span.

 the ”conference.”

UPDATE: Teri is totally on the case. Check out her new blog item on this.

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Posted in: Congress • meltdown
 
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 7 Comments

  • homeatlast says:
    October 7, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    House panel has former AIG execs on the carpet.
    …..as well they should! Dispicable!

  • Jeff says:
    October 7, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    The working Class need an uprising.

  • Calm down says:
    October 7, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    Yeah, that’d calm down the staff.
    Firing a those that allowed this to happen will calm them down even more.
    As my great-aunt used to say: “Things would go a lot more smoothly if they would just line a few up against a wall and shoot them.”
    You didn’t mess around with my great-aunt!
    It’s time to shoot a few, figuratively.
    We’re on the eve of economic armageddon, and these Neros are fiddling.

  • JC says:
    October 7, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    When you claim to be in such dire straits that you take a government bailout, there is NO excuse for this. Such abuses are exactly why I am opposed to the bailout package; I guarantee this will be the tip of an ugly iceberg.

    Take over the company, fire all of the executives, and start over.

  • Dale says:
    October 7, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    The gov’t has made a lot of people richer in the last few days. It was known what would happen and what the results would be. The country is going broke, no the middleclass and lower are going broke the rich will subside and there will be no middle class again. Obama and McCain can promise till the cows come home, but the Bush administration has ruined our economy and it will be years before it recovers. This clearly taxation without representation. But do you think we are going to get 2 people to stand together and say we don’t want it….noway. They haven’t gone hungry long enough.

  • Eric says:
    October 8, 2008 at 12:43 am

    What is staggering to me is that any PR person, if not the lead executives, would be cautioning about the appearance of this junket in light of the bailout and the pain that everyday Americans are encountering with their retirement accounts.

    The sense of entitlement is so egregious that I think all those that participated should pay their own part of the tab and be lucky they still have a job. Of course this trip will be on AIG’s tax return as a write-off, so it will double dip on our dime.

    I have retirement money handled by AIG and I want nothing to do with them at this point if there is not a wholesale replacement of their top management team.

  • AIG Blog Relations says:
    October 9, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Earlier today, AIG announced an important policy change - one that we wanted to be sure you knew about.

    A short time ago, our Chairman and CEO Ed Liddy said that he has ordered the immediate cancellation of all outside meetings, conferences, and recognition events across AIG, except those that are required by law or that are deemed absolutely critical to sustain our ongoing business needs.

    Given AIG’s commitment to our customers, business partners, regulators, and American taxpayers, coupled with the new and very different challenges our company now faces, we take these responsibilities extremely seriously. Their trust is critical to our success. We recognize the need to be sensitive about all company expenditures.

    As we move forward, we will continue to focus our efforts to pay back the $85 billion loan from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as quickly as possible.