[legion]

Come on guys. You know better.

Many bonuses are paid based on measures that have nothing to do with the company's profitability. Number of cold calls in a month, etc. The bonuses were often part of employment contracts with specific employees. You made 600 cold calls, you got a $4,000 bonus. Also, many divisions of AIG were profitable, but one small division pretty much lost much more money than the rest of the company makes. You have a lot of people who were doing what they should have been to contribute in a positive way to the bottom line. It's not their fault their efforts were wiped out by a few idiots who decided to play with subprime mortgages and credit default swaps.

I don't think it's a good idea to decide not to follow the contract, even if it was clearly a bad contract (i.e. millions when the company needed billions in loans to stay afloat). Some of the bonuses should have been paid with pink slips. Next time around, they should include some language in the contracts that has bonuses only being paid if the company, or division, or whatever is profitable.