Conrad: Employees Should Return AIG Bonuses or Be Fired

Kent Conrad joins the chorus of those who says that if he were CEO, he would require the employees to either return their bonuses or be fired.

The only problem with that, of course, is that most of the top employees (those receiving $1 million bonuses) are likely very important to the particular business units they are running and would damage the remaining value of their business unit if they left. Otherwise, they would not have been given retention bonuses in the first place. It doesn't make sense to give 70 top executives $1 million in retention bonuses only to fire them all. As a taxpayer and therefore owner of 80% of AIG, I don't think that's the best use of my money. I'd rather just sell the units that the company can sell and then let the buyer do with the employees as they choose.