Bonuses for bailed out companies Options

[dauss]

So, I'm trying to think of an example that would be close to the situation that AIG is facing to get a gauge on this particular situation.

Let's pretend that Brinker International Restaurants(Chili's, Maggiano's, On the Border, and Romano's Macaroni Grill) got a bailout with your tax dollars because they're in financial trouble. So, let's also pretend that one of their concepts was the main cause for all their profit loss, On the Border in this hypothetical case. So, On the Border has such massive losses that it causes Brinker to have to report a loss for the fiscal year.

Now, let's just say that you work for Chili's and don't really have any connection to On the Border because that's a different division. You've been doing your job and Chili's, Romano's, and Maggiano's not only made budget, but actually had profit for the last year. Should you get bonus, along with the guys from Romano's and Maggiano's?

[Billy]

I think the government should use tax money to give me a $10 million bonus. Sure, it's less than pennies on the dollar compared to our GDP but I'm pretty sure if I or others just started receiving large amounts of money from tax dollars you (Impala and Hartmann) would be pretty outraged.

The reason people are ticked about this, is not because of the amount, but because people are living large on the people's labor depite poor performance. I wouldn't care if they gave some CEO only $1 million of our tax dollars, I would still be ticked. Because here's some guy who gets to live rich, go to resorts, throw parties, on my money, while I don't even get to do that on my money. And to add insult to injury, he's being rewarded for being a FAILURE.

So the question remains, would these CEO's have received a bonus without the bailout? If the answer is no, then they shouldn't have received the bonus with the bailout.