What were they thinking?

Apologies Jeff Pfeffer. Had to borrow your phrase. But I dont know what else to say about the silliness of today's executives, beginning with the morons at AIG! 167 million dollars in Bonuses - when the comp committee decided to award them, were they on dope or something? Was the CEO on hallucinogenic drugs?

So here's what happened - some really clever product developers at AIG (and at other financial Institutions) developed a bunch of credit derivatives that they didnt know could bring their downfall. These very credit derivatives drove AIG into bankruptcy - none of the other senior executives nor the risk management committee had the technical capability nor the foresight to tackle and prevent this. Despite this management incompetence, the government decided to step in and prop up the company so that millions of ordinary people could be protected and the financial system in the US didnt collapse into the abyss of no return. So what do the AIG executives decide to do? Give themselves "performance" bonuses because otherwise they would "walk away" to other companies! Sounds very dubious indeed!

At the very least they should have thought of the optics of this - company going bankrupt, receives tax payers' money, decides to give performance bonuses to retain key employees, some of whom were probably responsible for this mess. Hmm. Not the kind of behaviour that wins you the fShining Star award.

Here are some other examples "what were they thinking?" recently:
a) The CEOs of the car companies going to Washington in private jets to ask for a bailout
b) The CEO of Ford indicating that he was okay where he was when asked by Congress whether he would take a pay cut to save Ford
c) Citigroup wanting to take possession of a Private jet just after receiving government bailout money
d) The management of Merck supposedly all getting higher than expectation performance bonuses when Merck's performance was reported to have been less than target
e) Merill Lynch staff getting bonuses in millions of dollars just after being saved by Bank of America