Wednesday, March 18, 2009

AIG distraction

I am a bit confused why everybody is an uproar about the $160 million of bonuses given to AIG executives. AIG has received $173 billion from the government so far, so the bonuses make up just 0.09% of the total. Maybe we should be focusing on the other 99.91%?

By comparison, the recent budget bill included $8 billion in earmarks. Congress porks up 50 times as much money as the AIG execs, but Congress distracts us with AIG's "greed" and wants us to ignore Congress's waste and corruption.

Why aren't we hearing about the huge bonuses that Lehman executive are getting? Oh yea, because the government let Lehman go bankrupt and now we don't have to reward their incompetence.

UPDATE: We must not forget that the federal government will get back 35% of those bonuses through the income tax. So the bonuses account for just 0.06% of the total money given to AIG.