Resignation raises questions

Jake DeSantis, executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, quit his job. He sent a long letter of resignation not only to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive, but also to The New York Times. He said, in part, “I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped public outrage.”

He goes on to say that he was promised pay he is not getting and has lost “a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. ... .” He intends to donate the $742,006.40 he received to “organizations that are helping people suffering from the global downturn.”

I want to ask Mr. DeSantis who the responsible people might be, since he says he isn’t among them. I would also like to ask him how it is that “a handful” of people could bring down the entire world financial system. That is the kind of power Osama bin Laden dreams of, but it turns out working for AIG beats terrorism hands down in destructive capacity and pay. And no one sends the Marines out to look for you either. What a sweet deal.

Mr. DeSantis compares himself to a competent plumber who should be paid when an incompetent electrician causes a fire that burns down the house. My question to Mr. DeSantis is who in this building-trades scenario is the general contractor? Or does everyone just go off and do their own thing with no oversight whatsoever? In the building projects I have been involved in, if a plumber became aware of incompetent work by an electrician, he would sound an alarm. Trades people are often knowledgeable about the quality of the work being done by others. And electrical work requires inspection by impartial inspectors. In addition, people in the trades are loathe to work with people they don’t trust. Maybe Mr. DeSantis has not spent much time around construction sites, but I am really warming up to his analogy.

In construction there are very few catastrophic failures. Why? Do we have a lot more checks on construction than on the financial industry? Yet when a building collapses, a lot fewer people are hurt than when an AIG collapses. There are investigations in construction disasters, and it seems to me that we are more likely to find someone to hold responsible than in financial disasters. The taxpayers don’t have to bail them out either. So why are we more careful with buildings than with so-called financial products? Less is at stake, but maybe construction is easier for regular people to understand. I know I trust my contractor a lot more than I trust my bank.

Mr. DeSantis wrote, “Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.” So I guess he could justify never being home if they just paid him a million dollars or so? Well, that is a small point.

In these huge entities, there seems to be no sense of collective responsibility at all, that having shared huge profits, one should share failure and loss. I don’t think the situation is unique. It is very human to bask in the glow of the successes of our company, nation, team, church or club, but to resist taking on the consequences or their problems and failures.

When Mr. DeSantis wrote of his $742,006.40 payment, I thought to myself that it more closely resembled my lifetime earnings than it did one pay check. I know all about the law of supply and demand and the market, but still, is anyone’s time worth 20 or 200 times someone else’s time? Is one Mr. DeSantis worth 20 of me?

I thank Mr. DeSantis for his letter. It gave me a lot of insight into the thinking on Wall Street. I wonder if he has the same curiosity about me that I have about him.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.