Do We Own 80% of AIG or Don’t We?

That’s what the talking heads on the news tell me. Since my government has given AIG somewhere in the neighborhood of $180 billion, someone did the math and came up with the fact that the American people own 80 percent of American Insurance Group, or AIG.

The same insurance company that says it is going to use $165 million of that money to pay bonuses to those employees, or many of them anyway, who are directly responsible for the financial meltdown that has robbed hundreds of billions from all of our 401(K)s.

And from what I am hearing, the feds don’t think they have any recourse but to let them have their lucre, because it is in their contracts, and we always honor our contracts, right?

Just tell the UAW workers who bent over backwards making contractual changes so their employers, the Big 3 automakers, could get financial bailout money.

So if we can’t change the contracts, because they are set in some unchangeable species of stone, can we, as the new owners of record make some changes of our own?

How about a name change? Certainly that would be appropriate, and in the best interests of our new company. Heck, Blackwater was having trouble getting those new international contracts because of the bad press they have gotten in the past couple of years, when they shot and killed innocent Iraqi market goers.

They changed their name. Now it’s called “Xe.” That’s right, they took the name of the chemical symbol for Xenon.

But they pronounce it simply “zee”

I have a modest proposal, then. Since it is de rigeur for companies who suffer from name recognition, because their names have suffered from ignominy, to change their names, I propose a new name for AIG.

Since we the People now own 80% of AIG, I propose that we rename our new corporate giant People’s Insurance Group. I know, it sounds somewhat like communist organizations, but let’s call a spade a spade, we nationalized this company, right? Why not call it what it is?

I even have a new logo for them.

I really like the new logo of my new company, don’t you?