AIG & Congress: bailouts, bonuses, and evil

The more I look at the AIG bonus issue, I can only shake my head.

The arrogance of AIG executives who think that they deserve millions of dollars in bonuses after blackmailing the country is absolutely mind-blowing. I realize that they have contracts … that’s part of the problem.

Interestingly, I haven’t heard any pundit on the Right say about the AIG execs the same thing that they said about the UAW when we were discussing automotive industry bailouts. When UAW contracts were on the table, the contracts were called crippling and were said to be part of the problem. No one says that about a bonus structure like Wall Street’s, I guess.

If anyone has ever wondered why there is a perception that the Republicans are the party of the rich, wonder no more. The idea that we should break contracts with mildly-overpaid people who do hard, physical, productive work but leave intact the contracts of isnanely-overpaid people who wreck their own companies — and the world economy — defies explanation.

At the same time, no one on the Left seems to view Wall Street contracts as being as sacred as they treated those in Detroit.

Does anyone in politics have a shred of intellectual consistency? Is a little bit of integrity too much to ask?

This is part of why I’m against all bailouts — if your business made contracts you can’t afford, then you deserve the consequences. AIG claims that it has to pay these kinds of bonuses in order to keep “top talent.”

AIG is run by top talent? Out of curiosity, what would it look like if AIG was run by two chimpanzees and a dope-smoking middle-school dropout?

In Congress, of course, there is now self-righteous indignation about AIG’s offense against logic and morality. That they voted to allow these bonuses has now come out, and they’re aghast!

Moreover, it turns out that members of Congress are quick to defend themselves by saying that they didn’t know this provision was in the bill. I’m not sure when incompetence became a defense, but okay … then I would argue that every member of Congress who concedes being incompetent should resign.

I don’t think I’ll hold my breath waiting for that display of integrity.

Once again, we passed a stimulus bill without reviewing it adequately. No one knows what’s in these bills, because no one is reading them. They’re being written and passed too quickly, and too irresponsibly.

Congress now wants to rush through another piece of legislation, already passed by the House, to tax these bonuses at 90% to take the money back. In one sense, this would help make up for the mistake that they made by passing bailout measures without accountability. However, what it really does is establish the idea that tax policy will be used to punish behavior.

To argue that this violates Constitutional principles is not too far off-base. Although what they did is ethically abhorrent, what AIG did was specifically endorsed by the Congress that now claims the moral high ground.

This is utterly absurd. Congress is incometently passing bailouts and stimulus bills, with no idea what they’re doing.

Ultimately, I ask: Who’s more evil, AIG executives who think that they deserve these bonuses as if business was cruising along as usual or members of Congress who specifically authorized those payments and now want to pretend that they were spending our tax dollars responsibly?

I see that one as a tough call.

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