The buck should be stopping here…and now. Americans are SO apathetic. We think we have no power, yet we do hold all the cards. Supply and demand. Cease the demand, the supply has no where to go. Think of it. Countries do it all the time…economic sanctions. Your child’s toy is painted with lead, made in China. ALL Americans, stop buying ANYTHING made in China. Today. Sanction this, Batman. You can’t understand your customer service rep answering from New Delhi? Cancel the product or service until the call center for that company is back in the USA. The list goes on and on. We, as consumers, have created the monster by continuing to support it. Only we can kill it.

Corporate greed would cease to exist, if we just let them all go bankrupt. So what if a few execs jump off the Pru or Hancock buildings. One less convict to feed and house.

We elect murderers. liars and thieves, because they promise the world, and deliver more of the same. I have the great displeasure of being from the state that Ted the murderer and Barney the thief hail from…I’m eagerly awaiting the Pelosi’s investment in local real estate.

We have the power, we just cannot imagine using it. Saving the starfish, for anyone familiar with the story, begins with one. I’ve already started…what are you waiting for?

While your analysis and reason is very sound, I have to agree with a few of the comments; why are we bailing-out AIG in the first place? I don’t buy the “too big to fail” argument – bankruptcy is not an end to all operations. The profitable units would continue on under a new flag and the others would serve as an example of what to avoid going forward.

The bonus thing is huge on principle only, but the magnitude of the event is minor as mentioned above. On principle, I find the 90% tax bill to be even more saddening than the bonuses, themselves. Tax is the wrong lever and creates incredible distortions. Mr. Stupid doesn’t make Mr. Angry go away.

Almost universal agreement exists in the root cause of the financial meltdown being toxic mortgages. Clinton’s 1999 executive order forced Freddie and Fannie to release funds to people that would have never qualified earlier, and yet the powerful Senate Banking committee blocked other banks from following suit. Then, when Congressional leadership changed (2004), and Chris Dodd (D) took over the banking committee, the banks were forced to provide loans that, for the prior 50 years, would have never been allowed. In an attempt to lessen the impact of these toxic assets, the financial institutions bundled these toxic assets with more solvent ones, but the effect overwhelmed the system.

The American people voted into power the very people that perpetuated this economic meltdown. I am incredulous that “we the people” would actually do this, but then, ignorance is bliss.

And yet, on Wednesday of this week, massive bonuses were paid out to Freddie and Fannie executives WITH NO PRESS COVERAGE!! Were they not one of the first bailout targets? Is this not a quasi-government organization? So instead of a balanced approach to sharing blame, it is pointing the finger at “it ain’t in my back yard” !!!

If, as a Senator suggested, these executives that took taxpayer money and squandered it, should commit suicide, then Washington will be a lonely place, with all the dead politicians that [should] have taken the same path.

Apparently the higher powers decided that such a move would be too dangerous for the world economy. So the US Government is propping it up. But is it necessary to micromanage every aspect of its function now? The bonuses, after all, are about 0.1% of what was given to AIG. If that is helpful to keeping the company together, that might be the right thing to do. We don’t know who is getting the bonuses and whether they are the folks who caused the problems or whether they are the ones who helped the most to save the company. And, in fact, some people might be in both categories.

What happens if all the best people quit? If I worked for AIG I think I would be angry myself. Probably I would have lost a huge amount of my retirement which probably would have been in AIG stock. If I felt that I had done my best and now my well earned and well deserved bonus was being “clawed” out of my hands, I think I would be inclined to take a hike. Fortunately I am not in that situation.

One can also argue that AIG never would have been in such dire straights had not the New York state regulators under then Governor Spitzer forced out the man who seemed to really know how to run the firm, Hank Greenberg. At least that’s what Greenberg argues. He may be right.

They want it elsewhere also….

As for the “collateral damage of an AIG bankruptcy”… how bad would it have been? Millions of people losing their jobs? Could we have seen the stock market fall by more than 50% from its peak? Oh wait… all of those worst-case scenarios did happen AND our grandchildren will be stuck with paying back the $300 billion or whatever we’re going to borrow to keep AIG operating in a simulation of the world circa 2006.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Feed a man with stolen fish and he’ll learn to steal them, too.