You cannot tax a specific group of people after the fact.. It's unconstitutional. See: Article I, Section 9, and Section 10. An "ex post facto" law retroactively criminalizes an activity that was legal at the time the activity occurred. The payment of the AIG bonuses certainly was legal, seeing that the payments were specifically authorized by those now pretending to be in a lather over them. My guess is that Pelosi just got half the House Republicans to fall into the "trap" of authorizing a tax increase ( from 35% to 90% ) knowing full well that it won't even get to a vote in the Senate. Too funny.
I was as outraged as anyone else, but if you read the testimony yesterday, these were retention bonuses. If they weren't paid, those people would have quit and AIG would require even more bailout funds. Consider in a good investment. Should incompetence be rewarded? Why not, it is in the government all the time. That's why congress got a raise last year.
You never see employees or management offering to buy the company to run it themselves. This truth is universal in every industry.
Soldiers? Firemen? Policemen? Postal Workers? Politicians? OK, OK.... I agree if it includes Politicians.
I'm not a big fan of the move either... but c'mon. Taxation for certain behavior is clearly *not* the same thing as criminalizing behavior.
Leave and go where? They don't have much of a choice as the job market in finance is dead. They can either shut up and stay or go and become cashiers at Walmart.
So let's do some math here. $2 miilion taxed at 90% leaves $200,000 after tax. What rate of state and city tax gets you to $20,000 Chewbacca? Another 90% on your income after the federal 90% tax? Much as I'm tempted to make some nasty remark here, I'll refrain.
My thought on this is... if I was one of the few actually valuable employees at AIG... I would be demanding a transfer to the London office, while also making plans to relinquish my US residency/tax status.
You said 200k when it's actually 2 million, and you're calling somebody a dumbass? If the state eats the other 10% then the bonus is zero. Where are you going with this?
I think this rule is highly unfair. Most of the banks algorythmic trading, prop desks... did a good job compensating their crap credit units... I f you want to create trading responsibility, introduces malus along with bonus in the same 10-12% of losses generated. I know, suddenly multi million positions would kind of disappear ...LOL