Who benefits from the obscene AIG bonuses? So far, the one result seems to be widespread support for confiscatory taxes on the evil executives. And one could easily predict this anger. Does this sound like a democratic or a republican goal?
Let's try to get the facts from Dodd, Geiter and Obama before following this conspiracy theory. I sure hope I'm wrong.
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2 comments:
Hi Morgan,
One theory that seems more plausible is that the political people couldn't believe that Wall Street/AIG would do something so stupid when they were going to the government for $100 billion/1 trillion and Wall Street was unable to forsee that they were now operating in a political environment and all hell would break loose.
It is also possible that the pols {and some pols deleted an amendment that might have stopped this from earlier bills} simply didn't expect the hail of flak that came from the press over this. Journalism is in a big contraction and journalists seem to be understandably less supportive of the system than they used to be.
After all, if you are used to thinking in Billions, 160 Million is nothing. This is actually less outrageous than some of the other things that have gone on, but it is easy for the average guy to understand. AIG fucked up so badly that it had to get 100 Billion for the government and the people responsible for the fuckup are giving themselves millions.
It's actually pretty simple. The men and women who got the bonuses busted their asses, and they're used to getting bonuses. They don't think they're failures. They pretty much did what they did last year, and they got a bonus last year. They compare themselves to each other, not to guys in software development. The people in other industries, though, compare the people who are bankrupting the country to the guys who just write code, and don't consider the customs of AIG acceptable.
Ray,
I should note that I really don't believe my theory. But some rightwing kook might come up with something similar.
It's interesting that the bonuses are less (as a percentage of the AIG bailout) than earmarks in the federal budget.
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