There oughtta be an angry mob right out of the Frankenstein movie at these guys mansions.

The more I think about this (and about TARP; and about the stimulus; etc.) and about the sheer volume of money that's changing hands amongst good friends (read: Congress and their Wall Street buddies), the angrier I get.

It's not that I never questioned it before. I just always have agreed with the sentiment that decisive action had to be taken -- and quickly. My fear of a credit freeze won me over.

Now, I'm feeling the way I do when I buy a sandwich at the airport: swindled.

Gobs of money are flying around -- much of it unaccounted for -- but people everywhere continue to lose their jobs. It doesn't help that all I can think about is the stimulus places like Bermuda must be enjoying -- because that's where I picture all the golden parachuters from Wall Street to be, hanging out on the beach, discussing how easy -- and profitable -- it was to bring the U.S. economy to its knees.

I want someone to convince me that Congress and Wall Street aren't in bed together. Help me sleep better at night.

Yes, it was bad, but this payout was already approved back in December by Congress and was guaranteed by contract. That Congress approved it just shows the chummy relationship Washington has with Wall Street, unfortunately.

The real problem is the $12,9 billion in bailout funds funneled through AIG to pay Goldman Sachs for its highly speculative credit default swaps. This isn't money that's being put to productive use, it is money that's being put in a black hole to pay off these speculative derivative bets.

Where's the outrage? Trillions have been spent to bail out the banking sector, all for their benefit while we the taxpayer have to pay for it.

Why the hell can't they get rid of Chris Dodd?

This is big from a cultural and historical aspect. When a country declines, at least in modern times, it goes from making and selling widgets into finance. From there, it sinks into irrelevance. I speak of Holland, Great Britain, Germany and the others.

Under the last several presidents, our manufacturing and industrial base is totally hollowed out. In step the "masters of the universe" on Wall Street. Manufacturing is tossed out. Finance is in and big.

Barack Hussein fires the head of GM, the largest company in the most important manufacturing sector in the USA. G. W. Bush and Barack Hussein allow their shills to lavish billions on AIG and further scores of millions on the AIG executive gaggle of losers, incompetents and thieves. Finance is cherished and rewarded. Thus is the USA swirling faster down the drain into the finance irrelevancy.

We as a people need to get our mouths off of the former president and the present president . They are not to blame for the financial mess that all of us are in and are being affected by. Two words defines the bottom line . Greed and covetousness . Many involved in finance approved loans to those of us who could never afford them in the first place . We all wanted a piece of the pie, to keep up with the Jone's. After all don't we owe it to ourselves to have everything we could possibly want and have it right now even if we didn't really have the means to pay for it. If I am honest with myself , I'd have to say that I claim responsibility for my part. It is unfortunate that many who got got loans for the house of their dreams have lost them as well thanks to unscrupulous finance institutions who wrote the loans to these people knowing that nothing good could possibly come out of it.
Myself, I have finally learned to live within my means (even though it took me 40 years to learn my lesson) and have learned to be content with what I have . Money comes and money goes , but if we are true to ourselves and learn to be content with what we have been blessed with , we are better for it and are happy as we are .

Have you ever wonder where the all the growth went? to those who need it the least.

Though both rightist parties were responsible for this insult to working people, partisans are trying to make this distraction from more serious issues into a weapon against the party they don't have faith in.

http://tinyurl.com/2rightwings

Just think, if the bailouts never happened, which is what most people would have preferred, this land mine would never have exploded. Nice work, Uncle Sam...

This thing has been a cluster-fuck from the get-go, which doesn't negate the fact its not much of a story. The handling of it, and by that I mean the spin doctor handling of it has been abysmal. Makes me think I should get back in the business.

The Rush Limbaugh story and the AIG mess were political stunts drummed up by the administration. The main stream press kept the Rush story alive as best they could, but they will take a pass on what people knew about the AIG bonus pay outs, and when they knew it (last November). I'm glad that there is agreement here that the administration has acted incompetently in its handling of the economic crisis we're in...the reason we're seeing all the distractions in the first place. Obama needs to put aside any socialist aspirations, and stop with the anti capitalist rhetoric. The private sector will ultimately turn this thing around. I heard somebody say that this is Obama's Katrina moment, he even has his own Michael Brown...

Yes it's a horrific example of bad judgment, misaligned incentives, and greed, but this should not be such a big story.

It's $165M. That's it. There's no way in hell that the President of the United States, The Treasury Secretary, and most of the US legislators should be spending so much time on this, or other single company, HR related issues.

I tend to agree with Krauthammer:

"Geithner has been particularly maladroit in handling this issue. But the reason he didn't give the bonuses much attention is because he's got far better things to do -- namely, work out a rescue plan for a dysfunctional credit system that is holding back any chance of recovery.

"It is time for the president to state the obvious: This recession is not caused by excessive executive compensation in government-controlled companies. The economy has been sinking because of a lack of credit, stemming from a general lack of confidence, stemming from the lack of a plan to detoxify the major lending institutions, mainly the banks, which, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, is where the money used to be."

Yes, the bonuses were obscene. But let's get our government back to fixing the real issue, and not jumping all over each other to prove who is the most outraged.

Obama led the American public to believe that his administration would bring change to politics in Washington. Unfortunately he, nor the majority of Congress, did anything at the time to prevent companies like AIG from giving themselves outrageous bonuses after accepting government assistance.
If this is Obama's type of change, then it is certainly headed in the wrong direction. Blame doesn't fall solely on him, but he is certainly culpable after promoting and defending the stimulus bill. Congress and Wall Street are continuing to help each other get richer and more powerful at the expense of most Americans.
There is talk about how this situation is leading to a populist outrage. I don't think there will be rioting in the streets over this scandal, but I hope it will lead people to put pressure on their representatives to improve their record, or vote them out.
Most likely AIG will weather the storm of bad publicity, give its image a makeover, and continue to rip off the public.