Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Be Afraid. Be very, very afraid

What do you do when big government and big business are equally stupid?

Case in point: Insurance giant AIG paying more than $165 million in bonuses following its receipt of billions in bailout money. Sure, the money is mainly a "retention investment," to keep talented employees from walking. But when your entire industry is imploding, and competitors are melting down, bonuses such as these are ridiculous. It's symbolic of the common sense and moral meltdown of Wall Street in the first place.

But the U.S. Congress and President Obama should not be getting so self-righteously angry about this whole thing, either. These bonuses were negotiated months ago. The leigislators grilling AIC CEO Edward Liddy in Washington today are the same bozos who approved the bailout. They don't seem to understand that their bailout enabled the company to go forward with the previously approved bonuses.

Makes you wonder what else they don't understand about the billions of tax dollars they're throwing at bailouts and miscellaneous pork-barrel stimulus packages.