AIG'S Jake DeSantis: Should We Feel Sorry For Him or What

So, what to make of AIG's soon-to-be-former EVP Jake DeSantis and his resignation letter? I bet more Americans read that letter than read the transcript from Tuesday's POTUS press conference, which may be fair enough...

Upon first review, I felt very sympathetic towards the guy because, IMO, these AIG 'bonuses' are a spectacular red herring in the first instance; they were retainment payments and in fact should have been reviewed as part of the TARP fund allocation process and assumed renegotiated.  NB: Strike 1 against the current Administration for not catching that one...

But a second gaze screams,  'Give Me A Break', and for the following reasons:

• JD's point about not being responsible for the credit default swap transactions. Please. While the average layperson may not know the ins-and-outs of financial transaction management, some of us more knowledgeable in derivatives - who aren't too happy with recent events, mind - do.  Many credit derivative transactions are and were hedged by equity products and as the head of commodity/equity trading, JD not only knows this but it's not unreasonable to think that many of the CDS positions were being hedged by trades in his desk.  So his 'not-my-fault' stance' seems patently inappropriate.
  
• JD's EVP status. The letter's tone seemed to come from someone who while not quite an ingenue, wasn't a fully seasoned racehorse either.  If JD did indeed come from humble beginnings as he states, then his rise in AIG was fairly fast-tracked if not meteoric.  Meaning that the doe-eyed indignation therein is about as transparent as being on the inside of Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak.  If investment banking is a reasonable comparative culture (and I think we can assume it is), no one rises to that level in that time-span without swimming in-school with all the Big Fishes and having his soul bought and paid for with the bill of lading long discarded.  Jake, if you agree that you were overpaid previously, then you clearly accepted your fate or fortune - complaining now just makes you seem overwrought and underwhelming.

So a weird one all round - I can't possibly understand what JD was thinking by making this public (because AIG sure as hell didn't...).  A reader from the NYTimes - Rolf from NY - said it best to sum up:

"If your company accepts tens of billions from taxpayers, consider your bonus payments renegotiated."