Year-end Bonuses, Bank Bailout | 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.

Democrats and Republicans tried to outdo one another in voicing indignation as the House debated a bill to punish A.I.G. executives who got big bonuses.

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.