More money is wasted on federal budget earmarks in one day than the AIG bonus payouts. Feckless politicians scramble to fund projects that benefit no-one and are a manifest waste of taxpayer money. This has been going on for decades, and very little has been done to change this system of legal pick-pocketing. President Obama campaigned on a promise to do away with earmarks; presented with his first chance to do so, he promised: "next time". The uproar caused by the AIG Financial Products bonus payouts is not in itself unwarranted - why should the very unit that sank the company be rewarded so handsomely? But it is both misdirection, as well as misdirected. Misdirection, because the amount of money (some $210 million at last tally) is irrelevant in the context of the trillion-plus dollars at stake in the current economic resuscitation efforts, including the so-called bailout of the financial system. Politicians are reacting with base populist fervor in an effort to soothe their constituents. The AIG FP bonuses are not a symptom of the abuse that led to the financial system's meltdown; rather, the entire situation is indicative of the inability of career politicians to manage private sector business. Misdirected, because the target of the apoplectic politicians and the sign-carrying masses is the recipients of the bonuses. Assuming that what they did in the course of their employment with AIG was neither criminal nor negligent (but simply stupid and ignorant of actual credit risk), they are being accused of accepting money which was lawfully offered to them by their employer. Is there a living person who would tell their manager that they would refuse any retention bonus money because it was undeserved? In this economy, it may very well be the last significant payout they ever see. They have families; children to send to university. It would be a gross miscarriage of justice to publish the names of the recipients, creating as it would the possibility - indeed, the probability - that they will be targeted for abuse by vengeful and misguided citizens.Better to set our sights on those who knew of and authorized the payments. It is becoming clear that Secretary Geithner was aware of the contractual obligations. Is the same true of the House and Senate Financial Services Committees? I would be much more interested in finding the true culprits in mismanaging the huge sums of money at stake than a few guys at AIG who did what anyone else would have done - and did so legally and without guile.
