It is with no regret that I, as a (reluctant) shareholder, accept your your very public resignation from AIG.
In fact, since I know you are a man who appreciates the bottom line, I will go even further:
"Good Riddance"
I don’t know if you want to hear any more, but if you do, follow along here.
Your basic premise seems to be that you were just the plumber while the electrician burnt down the house.
None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house
That is a very interesting approach Jake. (May I call you Jake? I always call my plumbers by their first name.)
It seems as though you view yourself in the mold of a Ken Danagger or perhaps an Ellis Wyatt. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, you are not the man I thought you were...) But before you go all Joe the Plumber on us, consider this:
You think you were a hero for producing all that money for AIG as a commodities trader. So, your argument goes, why penalize me? But Jake, have you forgotten that in the past years your bonus had a significant component to it from the overall performance of your group, AIG – FP including the now reviled CDS traders?? To go back to your plumber analogy – you worked for a general contractor who paid you because – follow me closely here - he got paid for the elecrician's work as well as yours. Your ability to work as a plumber depended on having an electrician wire the house – unless all you were doing is cleaning out port-a-pottys.
You seem to imagine that you were some kind of genius who made money trading commodities. Well, I am in that business and I know quite a lot about your game. I think you vastly overrate yourself and your ability to predict commodity price movements. If you don't believe me, think of the geniuses at Enron and Amaranth.
Did you think for a moment about what enabled you to be in that market in the first place? Do you realize the only reason the other traders gave you the time of day was because you were working for a AAA rated company? If you don’t believe me, go out there and hang out your shingles as an ‘independent’ commodity trader. Let me know in three years how many traded with you, on your word, on your personal ability to back up your bets.
Where did that AAA rating come from?
It came from the millions of ordinary schlubs from across the world who trusted AIG with their insurance premiums. The master of their world, you risked their future every day, making your commodity bets. As you yourself admit, you were probably overpaid for that.
So now you want to go all John Galt on us.
I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust.Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.
Me neither.
But let me disabuse you of the notion that ‘your hard work got you here’... better yet, let me let Matt Taibbi tell it to you:
"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"
But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.
So, pardon me for not thinking of you as some sort of highly talented Master of the Universe who has been unfairly tainted by the actions of his colleagues.
I think of you as a selfish jackass who thinks of himself as a mercenary genius and does not know the meaning of the word "Team".
You may think of yourself as some sort of spiritual Michael Jordan who is being punished. Well, even Michael Jordan needed Scottie Pippen.
I wonder how your colleagues at AIG FP feel about you now that you have said – "I got mine and I quit" when things got harder for your team. But knowing the business you are in, they are probably cheering you on, just as the traders on the CBOT trading floor cheered on that other jackass – Rick Santelli.
So, from one (unwilling) shareholder, Good Riddance and don't let the door hit you on the way out.