Hollow outrage at AIG bonuses

Jim Vandehei:

President Barack Obama and everyone else in Washington is in a sprint for the microphones to express outrage at the big bonuses for the knuckleheads who screwed up American International Group and threaten to do the same to the rest of the economy.

Obama wants to take every legal step possible to kill the bonuses. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wants the AIG executives to consider killing not just the bonuses but themselves, too.

Here’s something neither Obama nor Grassley answered in their bellicose remarks Monday: Why did it take so long for the president and senior lawmakers to get so worked up? More troubling, why did it take so long for them to discover AIG planned to give huge bonuses in the first place?

Watching the coverage the past 24 hours, it would seem AIG just made public its plans to give top employees big bonuses. Wrong.

AIG disclosed its retention-bonus program more than a year ago, including bonuses directed to those handling the exotic derivatives that got the company and the country into this mess.

The bonuses were essentially a nonissue when AIG got its initial bailout money, almost $150 billion under President Bush in the two months surrounding the presidential election. Joe Biden, then the vice presidential nominee, came out strongly against the bailout. Obama did not.

Timothy Geithner, then at the New York branch of the Federal Reserve, was a huge proponent and architect of the AIG bailout. So if Obama had strong private opposition to the idea it did not affect his pick for the person who would oversee all bailouts.

The bonuses were again a nonissue when Obama himself increased the bailout to $173 billion last month.

...
What the "outrage" demonstrates is the Democrats unmatched capacity for high dudgeon. They are masters of it and they drive fact and logic from the playing field covering up their past involvement in the matters raising their dudgeon. There is no one better at it, but when you see it there should be red flags telling you to get the rest of the story.

Comments

  1. Ju3:47 PM

    FALLOUT: Those who voted for the stimulus supported the law to protect AIG's Bonuses. Obama's Own Stimulus Bill Protects the AIG Bonuses He Now Condemns —
    http://www.butasforme.com/2009/03/17/obamas-stimulus-bill-explicitly-grants-aig-the-legal-right-to-hand-out-bonuses/

    ReplyDelete

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