/snark
You're being manipulated by republicans. They're using a classic appeal to emotion to piss you off and whip you up into anger far beyond the levels justified by the AIG bonuses.
This latest hot button issue is the populist and inflammatory question "why should the government give them your money in bonuses for destroying the economy?". Following that they demand information like "When did Tim Gheitner know about these bonuses?" and "He's too close to those who made this mess, shouldn't he be fired?"
I hereby call BS.
Each of these questions makes a certain amount of sense in and of itself. Each of these questions appeals to democrats. Throwing these questions at us in rapid fire succession is a tool for manipulation, and it's working.
I first encountered this type of non-rational manipulation two years ago with respect to universal health care. A friend of mine asked me, "doesn't it piss you off that these liberals want to take YOUR hard earned money and give it to some irresponsible schmuck so he can buy health care?"
My answer was... "well, I don't see it that way". Everyone needs health care at some point in their life (accidents, old age, etc). The money comes out of my paycheck anyway when that happens, so why do I care whether it comes out of my paycheck and goes into a 'just me' account or to pay for someone else's care, as long as I am taken care of?
Similar logic applies to the bonuses, "Yes, it pisses me off, but not enough to fleck my computer screen with spittle. This is immoral, unethical, and wrong. Let's make a difference in the lives of real people and empower unions instead of lighting our torches and breaking out the pitchforks".
So what do we do about those annoying bonuses?
Simple.
Subpoena the executives who authorized those bonuses. Subpoena those people who received those bonuses. Then, ask them simple questions, like "were those bonuses performance bonuses?" or "were those bonuses retention bonuses?"
Then, when the executives repeat the crap about the bonuses being 'retention bonuses', (when some of them were given to employees who had since left the company) or 'performance bonuses' (when some were given to divisions that caused the economic collapse), then those executives have just committed perjury. That is a crime, and it is punishable by prison time.
We can also send our DoJ (you know, those government investigators) to comb through those contracts on behalf of the majority shareholders. I bet we'll find all sorts of interesting and illegal things in there. I am sure that that would be enough to being these executives on board at civil-servant pay levels.
The only problem is that this solution would generate a real long-term fix to the problem of executive compensation, and would take time. Both of these terrify the populist 'agitators' and would cripple the republican machine for years to come (or rather, cripple more than they're doing to themselves). This is exactly why we should stay implacably calm in the face of the foul-smelling republican blowhards.
It's been less than 2 full months since our president saw fit to bring in a Wall-street guy to fix the messes of other Wall-street guys. We questioned it at the time, and we're still questioning it. However, I think we'll be better off waiting and seeing.
A common tactic in business and law enforcement both is to co-opt the opposition to make your own organization stronger. If someone comes along with a disruptive technology that threatens your company's profits, you buy her out and use that new technology as a way to transform your business. If you catch a genius hacker, you bring that hacker into the fold and learn everything you can to defend against attacks like that in the future.
Day trading in the markets based on emotion; gambling based on emotion, and watching the weekly ups and downs of the economy based on emotion are all silly things. Letting ourselves being manipulated by the republican media into a populist frenzy is NOT the way we fix the economy.
What we're paying for, in real terms, is 20 year's worth of bad fiscal policy cause by republicans and their strong arm tactics, from Regan through the republicans under Clinton, through the nightmare of the Bush years. Is that cost 3 Trillion? I don't know, but by how much has the SEC been underfunded these past 20 years? Our situation is like a parent who gives a child a credit card, makes the minimum payments every month, never looks at the bill (and the kid knows it) and finally the parent opens the bill to see what the balance with interest is. The billis huge. I'm OK with the fact that we're pulling our heads out of the sand and looking at the bill.
We'll have the perfect chance, in the 2010 elections, to primary the Obama administration into impotence by electing an unsympathetic house.
We elected the guy and we trusted him then. Let's extend that trust to his proxies and give the Obama team, such as it is, at least 18 months to govern before we start second guessing every move. Let's resist the insidious rightwing-populist manipulation and remain implacably calm.