The A.I.G. executive who was nicknamed “Jackpot Jimmy” by a New York tabloid walked up the driveway toward his bay-windowed house in Fairfield, Conn., on Thursday afternoon. "How do I feel?” said the executive, James Haas, repeating the question he had just been asked. “I feel horrible. This has been a complete invasion of privacy."
Mr. Haas walked on, his pink shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came haltingly. "You have to understand,” he said, “there are kids involved, there have been death threats. ..." His voice trailed off. It looked as if he was fighting back tears.
"I didn’t have anything to do with those credit problems,” said Mr. Haas, 47. “I told Mr. Liddy” — Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., the insurance giant — “I would rescind my retention contract.”
He ended the conversation with a request: “Leave my neighbors alone.”
Too late. Jean Wieson, who has lived down the block for 24 years, had stopped her car in front of Mr. Haas’s house before he arrived home. She was angry about the millions of dollars in bonuses paid to its executives, the credit-default swaps that brought American International Group to its knees, the $170 billion the federal government has spent to prop it up. "It makes me absolutely sick," she said. "It’s despicable. It’s disgusting what these people have done. They should be forced to give every cent back."
Those bonuses in years past helped make A.I.G. executives into prominent local citizens. They own big houses like Mr. Haas’s, with its three chimneys and its views of Southport Harbor and Long Island Sound in the distance. Some are well-known contributors to arts groups and private schools in Connecticut communities not far from the office park in Wilton that is the workplace of many of the employees in A.I.G.’s Financial Products division, which is at the center of the storm over bonus payments.
Now these executives are toxic, and those communities are rattled and divided. Private security guards have been stationed outside their houses, and sometimes the local police drive by. A.I.G. employees at the company’s office tower in Lower Manhattan were told to avoid leaving the building while a demonstration was going on outside. The memo also advised them to avoid displaying company-issued ID cards when they left the office and to abandon tote bags or other items with the A.I.G. logo.
Robb's prediction is that this is going to get a lot worse, with more actual rather than threatened violence (he has an in-depth analysis of coming anti-corporate violence). Where I differ is that I don't think it will be quite as tied to nationalism. The heart of the grievance -- as the most brutal are -- will be individual. As the middle and working classes absorb the brunt of the economic situation, and as the utter decadence of the upper-upper-upper class becomes apparent, the very primal instinct that they "ruined our lives," rather than a "they destroyed America" meme will take over.
There's plenty of precedent for this. In the New York draft riots of the Civil War, the well-dressed were often hunted down as "$300 men" (those who could afford to avoid the draft) and, after the Ludlow Massacre, people began taking potshots at John D. Rockefeller's house.
After all, think about it this way: you're struggling to support yourself/your family while an executive who helped tank the economy just got a million dollar bonus and seemed to be avoiding any consequences. If news came that one of those executives had been jumped by five or so people and beaten to a pulp: would your reaction be one of horror or a brief nod that "he had it coming."
Vigilantism is a strong impulse in humans, held in check only when there's a feeling that the governing authorities will instead do something to see that vengeance is meted out. It's been forgotten that this is one of a justice system's prime functions: vengeance dispensing.
It works like this: a force outside usual social disputes (e.g. the state) deals out punishment to prevent the constant, low-level internecine killings and violence that humans otherwise resort to (Jared Diamond's superb essay Vengeance Is Ours is essential reading here).
When that system breaks down however, when people feel, on a deep level, that no pain or discomfort is being meted out to those who they believe deserve it, they resort to violence themselves (or, at the very least, support those who do). It's a human instinct and one that causes anyone attempting to push humans into a more peaceable way of life to get severe headaches.
I'd wager that within three months, I'll be posting here about such an executive attack.
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