American International Group, Inc. (AIG) earned $1.45 billion in the first quarter. AIG owes the government $182.3 billion. AIG plans to pay its managers $380 million in bonuses. Do you see anything wrong with this picture?

Up to 3,000 managers will receive an average of $125,000. AIG has maintained that it has to pay these huge bonuses to retain their employees. This is hogwash. You can bet that there are thousands of unemployed persons on Wall Street who can do the job.

Reports this week indicate that Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's pay czar, has a darkly comic definition of "tough love." While Feinberg reduced overall cash compensation for the top earners at American International Group (AIG) by a healthy 63%, a closer look reveals that the insurance company's high-ranking employees are still pulling down the kind of eye-popping annual pay you might expect from a successful business.

American International Group (AIG) is holding onto its property/casualty division for a while. It originally planned to unload 20% of Chartis (formerly named AIU) via an initial public offering or through a private transaction involving institutional investors.

But CEO Robert Benmosche is concerned that he'd be giving up the operating unit at discount prices. Selling cheap to repay the government won't benefit anybody – not even taxpayers – so he's waiting until an appropriate price can be fetched.

During the past year, there's been no shortage of discussion about executive pay at American International Group (AIG) -- and the deluge continues. CEO Robert Benmosche reportedly threatened to walk last month over frustrations with the Obama administration's pay caps, but was persuaded to stay by the company's board.

Apparently, Benmosche's maneuver inspired five other AIG execs to issue similar threats, with the group warning last week that they might walk if pay czar Kenneth Feinberg gets too handsy with their compensation packages.

American International Group (AIG) is a step closer to paying back the U.S. government. The insurer has announced that it's planning to float American International Assurance on the Hong Kong stock exchange. A date hasn't been selected yet, but the decision isn't much of a surprise, given that AIG moved it into a special unit, a signal that some sort of liquidity event was on the way.

According to Robert Benmosche, the company's CEO, "The planned listing is in the best interests of policyholders, distribution partners, AIG shareholders and US taxpayers." He continues to say that AIA's roots are in Asia, which made a Hong Kong listing "a natural choice." The timing, according to AIA president and CEO Mark Wilson will depend on marketing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Notorious insurance titan American International Group (AIG) is on the upswing today, after Moody's Investors Service reported late Monday that it expects AIG will be able to repay its government debt. The ratings agency observed that AIG has made progress with its restructuring plan, and the firm's latest quarterly earnings "show continued stabilization of the core insurance operations despite challenging market conditions."

The insurance issue has put many of its non-core assets up for sale during the past year to generate capital and pare its unwieldy size, but some of those plans have been iced by new CEO Robert Benmosche. Moody's likes the new chief's approach, with the firm observing, "We believe that the slower approach to restructuring could help AIG to generate more favorable values from its business portfolio than would be the case under rushed asset sales."

Robert Benmosche has been CEO of American International Group (NYSE: AIG) for less than a month, but he's already established a reputation as an arrogant jerk -- which is exactly not what AIG needs at this particular moment in history.

Benmosche drew some sharp criticism for his comment that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo "doesn't deserve to be in government" and his comment that he will deal with "all those crazies down in Washington."

Those are pretty ambitious comments given that he and every single AIG employee around the globe literally owe their jobs to an unprecedented episode of taxpayer largesse -- brought to you by, at the expense of much well-deserved populist resentment, those "crazies down in Washington."

Executive pay czar Kenneth Feinberg could approve the compensation package for income American International Group (NYSE: AIG) CEO Robert Benmosche as soon as next week.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), "Mr. Benmosche, a former CEO of insurer MetLife Inc., was pressing for a quick resolution in large part to energize AIG employees and show them that AIG employees could be well-compensated, according to people familiar with the matter."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the bizarre rules these days make it worth looking at stocks through a different lens.

How much should we care about low-dollar speculation? How much should we care about the incessant trading in CIT (NYSE: CIT) (Cramer's Take) and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) (Cramer's Take), or Vonage (NYSE: VG) (Cramer's Take) and Sprint (NYSE: S) (Cramer's Take)? Or even Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take)?

First, I have to tell you that I worry about it less than I used to. Why? Because when we used to have rules and government officials that were willing to speak the truth about stocks, we wouldn't have these single-digit players out there every day. But without it, how in heck can people not believe that Fannie and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) are the biggest and best bets on a turn in housing?