AIG execs went on $500K retreat within days of Taxpayer bailout?

AIG executives spent $500,000 at an exclusive resort just days after the U.S. government agreed to spend $85 billion to protect the giant insurer from collapse, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who chairs the House Oversight Committee.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., described what investigators found during a hearing this morning on Capitol Hill:

After the bailout of AIG last month, the United States government effectively bought an 80% share in the company. That should have caused a fundamental change, you would think, in how the company was spending funds on compensation, bonuses and benefits.

But it doesn't look like that's what happened. The committee learned that shortly after the bailout went through, executives from AIG's major U.S. life insurance subsidiary, AIG American General, held a week-long conference at an exclusive resort in California.

The resort is called the St. Regis Monarch Beach. ... It's very impressive. This is an exclusive resort. The rooms start, gentlemen, at $425 a night. Some are more than $1,200 a night.

... We contacted the resort where AIG held this week-long event, and we requested copies of AIG's bills. We learned that AIG spent nearly $500,000 in a single week at the -- at this hotel. Now, this was right after the bailout.

... Let me describe some of the -- the charges that -- that the shareholders who are now U.S. taxpayers had to pay. Check this out.

AIG spent $200,000 for hotel rooms, and almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent -- listen to this one -- $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting their manicures, their facials, their pedicures and their massages while the American people were -- were footing the bill.

And they spent another $10,000 for -- I don't know what this is -- leisure dining.