I spent my St. Patrick’s day in New York City, tilting at a very large windmill – American International Group.

After a weekend of stewing about the outrageous bonus payments that a group of top AIG execs received, I decided on Monday that I wasn’t going to simply sit behind a keyboard and vent my outrage any longer. So, on Tuesday morning, I hopped on one of the Chinatown buses that runs between Philadelphia and NYC (what a great deal – $20 round trip, and I didn’t have to drive!), and headed for AIG’s corporate headquarters at 70 Pine St.

The walk from NYC’s Chinatown to the financial district isn’t particularly far – probably less than a mile – but there’s so much in the city for the senses to take in that it seems longer. As I made my way down Broadway from Worth St., I decided to take a short detour down Fulton, and walked over to the World Trade Center area. I’ve been to NYC many times since 9/11, but never visited the site to pay my respects.

What started as a quick side trip up the block to view a recent gash on American history became almost a quest. The area is totally fenced and blocked, and there just isn’t a good vantage point to scope out the construction / reconstruction activities from street level. So I headed down Liberty St. toward the West Side Highway, through throngs of construction workers at lunch, headed up the stairs toward the 1 World Financial Center building, and was finally able to get a fairly decent view from the skyway to 1 WFC.

It struck me how so little has really been accomplished at the site in the 7-1/2 years since the buildings came down. Certainly, there have been many logistical and political issues involved in the reconstruction, but when you actually see the hole for the first time, it’s surprising that there has been so little local or national will to rebuild the area.

As I left 1 WFC, making my way toward Broadway I walked past the many small stores and eateries at street level. I tried to visualize what it must have been like to be a cashier in one of those shops when the towers came down, and I wondered how long this whole section of lower Manhattan had been basically uninhabitable before the bodegas and restaurants could reopen. My mind wouldn’t wrap around the imagery, so I let it go, but I clearly need to revisit that entire corner of my head sometime in the future.

Heading back down Broadway, I noticed a police car – no, two – no, three or four – with their light bars blinking near the corner of Cedar. I knew that I was getting close to Pine St., and there were news reports that security had been ramped up at all AIG facilities due to threatening emails and phone calls. Was the NYPD presence part of the security response?

As I turned down Pine St., it was clear that the cops weren’t on the street for AIG, because there didn’t appear to be any security personnel in view as I walked toward the headquarters building, two blocks distant. In fact, except for a small placard on the front of the building, and the address being stenciled on the window of the lobby coffee shop, I would have missed the building entirely. That’s the way the canyons of the financial district unfold.

I stopped in front of 70 Pine St. to take a picture. It’s a huge building, but has a deceptively small entrance for a 66 story skyscraper. From inside the building lobby, through a single revolving doorway, a security guy watched me warily as I snapped the photos, but I continued moving. I circled the block, and stopped in a Duane Reade drugstore to pick up a piece of poster board. Outside of the store, I pulled a Sharpie pen out of my backpack, created my sign, folded it, and put it in my pack. The logistics of my protest were now in place…

(more…)

As I reported last night, the American International Building, AIG’s world headquarters at 70 Pine St. in New York City, is up for sale. According to the NY Post:

Bonus-bloated AIG is trying to scrape up another $100 million or so bucks by selling its 66-story Art Deco headquarters downtown…

AIG hired Cushman & Wakefield, whose brokers, Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan, sent out an e-mail to prospective buyers Monday boasting of the “breathtaking views” from the site, 70 Pine St.

But AIG probably will get only a fraction for the 77-year-old building that it would have gotten when the real-estate market was booming.

Industry sources said 70 Pine could have fetched around $320 million then. Now AIG will be lucky to pocket $100 million…

Cripes, that’s hardly even a dent on the bonuses the company paid out this past Friday. Still, the building might be a bargain – in fact, maybe one of the AIG bonus babies could use the cash they raked in this past Friday as a down payment. There’s a condo building next door (56 Pine St.), where a studio apartment goes for over $400,000.

Since the American taxpayer now owns 80% of AIG, does that mean we own 80% of the equity in the building?

Update, 2:15PM: 16 hours after a blogger broke the story, AP goes with it. They were in error, claiming the NY Post broke the story. I’m sure that they regret the error.

Editor’s update, 3/19/08: I wrote the post below on Tuesday evening, and have since written a lengthy piece on my trip to AIG headquarters in NYC, and posted it here. Enjoy…

It was a long, but ultimately satisfying day on the streets of New York City’s financial district. On Wednesday, I’ll write at length about my trip, but for starters, here’s a quick picture taken opposite AIG’s headquarters at 70 Pine St. around 2PM this afternoon:

I stood in that place for about 4 hours, directly in front of the small entrance to the huge American International Building (which I learned was up for sale). It was impossible for anyone exiting or entering the building to miss me. Some of the stares were precious. Some of the comments I received moved me. But no one ignored me, and no one went out of their way to aggravate me.

Interestingly enough, I had a couple of experiences heading to and returning from AIG that were also worthy of mention. I’ll roll the whole thing up for ASZ readers on Wednesday morning.

While I was in NYC and incommunicado today, a bit of AIG news broke, via a report from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo:

Fresh details, meanwhile, pushed outrage over AIG ever higher: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reported that 73 company employees received bonus checks of $1 million or more last Friday [emphasis mine]. This at a company that was failing so spectacularly that the government felt the need to prop it up with a $170 billion bailout.

So, the bottom line is that the bonus payments were fait accompli, and the money was in employee’s bank accounts well before this story broke on Saturday.

Good luck on recovering that money, Secretary Geithner.

The political kabuki theater continues – only the actors have changed in 2009. The basic script is relatively intact.