As noted in a post below by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, if you want to fix blame for the bonuses, pin it on the Dems.
But I must acknowledge that as far as I can tell, those bonuses were, in fact, correct, legal, and ethical, because they’re going to AIG employees who agreed to stay on a foundering ship and work to, literally, bail it out — that is, to get rid of the bad debt, not take on an even greater debt to the Feds, which is what the Dem “bailout” is.
From the Washington Post:
The handful of souls who championed the firm’s now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president.
“They’ve chosen to throw us under the bus,” said a Financial Products executive, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. “They have vilified us.”
They say what is missing from this week’s hysteria is perspective. The very handsome retention payments they received over the past week were set in motion early last year when the firm’s former president, Joe Cassano, was on his way out the door. Financial Products was already running into trouble on its risky credit bets, and the year ahead looked grim. People were weighing offers from other firms, and AIG executives feared that too many departures could lead to disaster.
So AIG stepped in with an offer to employees of Financial Products. Work through all of 2008, and you’d get a lump payment in March 2009. Stick around through 2009, and you’ll get paid through 2010. Almost all other forms of compensation — bonuses, deferred payments and the like — have vanished.
“People are trying to do the right thing,” the same Financial Products executive said. “Guys have worked their [tails] off to try to get value for the taxpayer. This isn’t money that’s being advanced to us. People have performed the work and done it exactly as we asked them to do.”
Again: the people who got the bonuses deserve them. They worked for them. They earned them. Now, they’re being so vilified, they’re not just afraid of being taxed into oblivion or even jailed — they’re afraid of being shot in the office parking lot.
[Update: And that, in fact, is exactly why Congress and Obama are egging on the populace about these bonuses. They know that we are all hopping mad, angry as hornets, and that it is absolutely crucial that we be distracted with appropriate class targets. If we are not distracted, of course, we would turn on the ones actually responsible for this, the politicians and regulators themselves. Can't be havin' none o' that now, can we? Make no mistake, though: either the pols back off rather than face lynch mobs, or the whole thing will end in Orwell's boot.]
Those bonuses should be paid because they were agreed on before the bailout bill was passed. The amendment to protect the bonuses was necessary; without it, AIG employees trying to save the company would have bailed in the parachute sense.
The Dems, rather than sticking to the one shred of principle they showed in bonuses, are now betraying the people in the trenches. Contrary to the Constitution they swore to uphold, they are trying to abrogate existing contracts that were legal when made.
Many observers are calling these actions a Bill of Attainder, in and of itself a grossly unconstitutional action.
Understand, folks. Those in power have no loyalty to anyone other than themselves, no principle other than their own power. No promise, no contract, no obligation, no law constrains them.
[Via Insty]
