President Obama seems to be staying true to his image amidst the AIG bonus controversy. The president said that while no one in his administration had been responsible for tracking and supervising how AIG spent their bailout money, the responsibility will not be passed beyond him.
In an address, the president said, “Nobody here drafted those contracts; nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in. We are responsible, though. The buck stops with me.”
AIG executives were handed out millions of dollars in form of bonuses which AIG claimed as contractual obligations. Top executives got as much as $4 million dollars each with the recipient of the largest bonus got $6.4 million. Taxpayers were outraged by the news since AIG received $173 billion in bailout from the government.
“People are right to be angry. I am angry. … People are rightly outraged about these particular bonuses,” he said. “But just as outrageous is the culture that these bonuses are a symptom of that have existed for far too long, a situation where excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk-taking have all made us vulnerable and left us holding the bag.”
Source: CNN
