Misuse Of Bailout Money, Year-end Bonuses | featured news

A top executive at troubled insurer AIG publicly resigns and says he will donate his entire bonus to charity.

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said 15 of the top 20 bonus recipients in A.I.G.’s financial products division had returned their bonuses.

Documents turned over to the Connecticut attorney general show that American International Group Inc paid out over $218 million in bonuses, more than the previously disclosed $165 million, published reports said on Saturday.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote Thursday on legislation to try to recoup bonuses paid to Wall Street executives with taxpayer money.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is not a lawyer, nor does he play one on TV. So when just about every question at Tuesday's afternoon briefing concerned bonuses at insurance giant AIG, Gibbs had a non-answer at the ready. "I'm not a contracts lawyer," he said at one point, later explaining that he was "not a contract lawyer," either. When asked whether the president could simply deny more money to AIG unless it scrapped bonuses, he repeated: "Again, I'd refer you to a contract lawyer, which I'm not one."

The Obama administration sought to reduce the bonuses, but the insurer, which received more than $170 billion in aid, said it was obligated to pay them.

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis is about to come under serious scrutiny by Congress.

The New York attorney general's office on Wednesday subpoenaed seven former Merrill Lynch & Co. executives as part of its ongoing investigation into the timing of year-end payments made to executives at the investment bank.

President Barack Obama issued a withering critique Thursday of Wall Street corporate behavior, calling it "the height of irresponsibility" for employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their crumbling financial sector received a bailout from taxpayers.