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The Best and the Brightest

Let them flip burgers.

Calvin Trillin

March 18, 2009

We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses… if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment. –AIG chair Edward M. Liddy, defending the payment of $165 million in bonuses to employees of a firm that has required $170 billion in government bailout funds

Yes, billions they lost in one quarter. This bothers them not in the slightest. They still want a bonus for failure, For they are the best and the brightest.

You’d think, with the damage they’d done, they’d Apologize, at their politest. But they want a bonus for failure, For they are the best and the brightest.

No bonus? Well, then they might leave, though The job market’s shrunk to its tightest, And Burger King now is competing To hire the best and the brightest.

Calvin TrillinCalvin Trillin is The Nation’s “deadline poet.”


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