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Washington - A prominent US Senator demanded on Tuesday that top executives at bailed-out insurer AIG show "contrition" but said his suggestion that they resign or kill themselves was just political talk.
Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said American International Group's senior cadre would do well to adopt what he called the Japanese model of honorably taking responsibility.
"We need to have that deep bow before the American people, with some sort of an apology, remorsefulness, contrition, to let people know that they know that they have not run their company right by running it into the ground," he said.
Grassley had told a radio station in his home state of Iowa on Monday that the insurance giant's shamed leaders had stoked public anger with lavish bonuses and that they should consider quitting or killing themselves
"The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them [is] if they would follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I'm sorry and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," Grassley told WMT radio.
"In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology," he said after AIG awarded some $165m in bonuses - going largely to the same London-based traders who brought ruin to the firm.
American International Group has received $180bn in rescue funding from taxpayers, but a backlash has grown amid reports of lavish parties and, now, bonuses.
Asked Tuesday about the remark, Grassley told MSNBC television "you ought to be able to tell rhetoric when you hear it" but sidestepped a question on whether he regretted making the original statement.
Grassley shot back that he had yet to hear any top executive at any major US firm that accepted taxpayer life-support say that "they are responsible for what they did and that they're sorry for what they did."
"And I think that that sort of contrition, expressed by American corporate leaders is very, very important," Grassley said as anger mounted over the bonuses at AIG.
AIG was deemed to be too big to fail, given the complex ties it built with financial institutions worldwide through so-called credit default swaps linked to the tanking property market.
- AFP