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sunshine jen: One Fictional Newscaster's Solution to the AIG Bonus Scandal
As S-Jammmmin, the Sunshine Jen Money Money Money Money Network, was debuting on St. Patrick’s Day, the news airwaves were getting soaked not with Guinness but with news of the scandalous AIG retention bonuses. A Senator from Iowa was even calling for honor suicides.
Wendall Jennings, who never met a bonus he didn’t like, seized the moment and immediately put his two favorite talking heads, Mindy Weinwright and Dirk Dalkey, on the air.
Dirk took the view that it was all fucked up, but the world was fucked up, and since everything was fucked, why not just lay down and get fucked. The network censor beeper certainly earned his bonus that day.
However, Mindy Weinwright had a solution which did not call for honor suicides, public humiliation, or mass hysteria. Methodically, Mindy worked through her solution without raising her voice or shaking out her hair which was recently cut in a Victoria Beckham-esque style.
So here’s Mindy:
Apparently, the reason AIG paid out some of its bonuses was to retain employees in the financial products division who had written some very complex derivative contracts because those employees were the only ones who understood the mess they created. My solution is to not pay them bonuses, but instead to take that money and hire four people.
The four new employees will be a lawyer, a theoretical economist or mathematician, a construction site foreman, and a poet. The lawyer would get to play with contract language. The theoretical economist/mathematician (preferably a PhD) would get to play with the numbers. The construction site foreman would keep them on schedule, get them everything they need, and yell at anyone onsite without a hard hat. The poet would have the vision, keep everyone inspired, and have free reign of the copier, and the new contract would have a very nice rhythm to it.
Meanwhile, if AIG really wanted to make some money off the whole debacle, they could also a hire a reality TV crew to follow the four new employees as they hack through derivative contracts. It would be white collar survivor except no one is eliminated and everybody eats.
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