Josh Marshall articulately explains why the AIG bonus story - bonuses going, no less, to "the very executives who caused AIG's implosion" and, "since all money is fungible...[is] being paid with taxpayer dollars"
Few exchanges have so captured the disconnect that makes this situation so politically explosive. We're collectively taking our country's future in our hands, spending vast sums of money to keep these companies from suffering the consequences of their own folly and (in many cases) criminality. And in return we're receiving cavalier dictates about pay-outs and bonuses from executives who by any reasonable measure work for us -- dictates we promptly accede to. There's a beggars can't be choosers problem there. And the disconnect is so mighty that it fuels the impression that the whole enterprise is not what it seems, not what we've been told, that in addition to picking up the tab we're being played for fools.
Is there a populist explosion coming in this country? I'm starting to believe, increasingly, that it might be. And if that explosion DOES come, it will be outrages like these AIG bonuses that light the fuse.
