Charles Grassley, AIG Executives, and Suicide

UPDATE: Grassley: AIG execs should repent, not kill selves

[Grassely] backtracked Tuesday morning in a conference call with reporters. He said he would like executives of failed businesses to make a more formal public apology, as business leaders have done in Japan.

"What I'm expressing here obviously is not that I want people to commit suicide. That's not my notion," Grassley said Tuesday. "But I do feel very strongly that we have not had statements of apology, statements of remorse, statements of contrition on the part of CEOs of manufacturing companies or banks or financial services or insurance companies that are asking for bailouts."

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Charles Grassley has been a U.S. senator since 1981.

You can't really blame his idiotic remarks on inexperience.

From Politico:

Sen. Charles Grassley is so angry over AIG bonuses that he says the executives should resign or kill themselves.

In a comment aired this afternoon on WMT, an Iowa radio station, Grassley (R-Iowa) said: “The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model 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.”

...In response to a POLITICO inquiry, Grassley spokeswoman Jill Gerber clarified Grassley’s comments, saying “clearly he was speaking rhetorically – he meant there’s no culture of shame and acceptance of responsibility for driving a company into the dirt in this country. If you asked him whether he really wants AIG executives to commit suicide, he’d say of course not.”

“Point being, U.S. corporate executives are unapologetic about running their companies adrift, accepting billions of tax dollars to help, and then spending those tax dollars on travel, huge bonuses, etc,” Gerber said.

Was Grassley really recommending that AIG execs should commit suicide?

No.

Was it an appropriate comment?

Absolutely not.

Suicide is no joke.

Questions:

Are all the recipients of the bonuses responsible for "driving [AIG] into the dirt"?

Is it possible that at least some of the executives behaved responsibly?

Do all the AIG execs deserve to be excoriated? Probably not.