The Rich Get Richer...

...and the Poor Ponder!

The real scandal of AIG, according to Robert Reich, isn't just that American taxpayers have so far committed $170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail -- the most money ever funneled to a single company by a government since the dawn of capitalism -- nor even that AIG's notoriously failing executives, at the very unit responsible for the catastrophic credit-default swaps at the very center of the debacle, are planning to give themselves over $100 million in bonuses. The scandal is that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money.[...]

This sordid story of government helplessness in the face of massive taxpayer commitments illustrates better than anything to date why the government should take over any institution that's "too big to fail" and which has cost taxpayers dearly. Such institutions are no longer within the capitalist system because they are no longer accountable to the market. To whom should they be accountable? As long as taxpayers effectively own a large portion of them, they should be accountable to the government.

But if our very own Secretary of the Treasury doesn't even learn of the bonuses until months after AIG has decided to pay them, and cannot make stick his decision that they should not be paid, AIG is not even accountable to the government. That means AIG's executives -- using $170 billion of our money, so far -- are accountable to no one.

Attytood has an interesting view:

This will go down as the weekend that America collectively screamed "AIGGGGG!!!!!" For a long time, outrage over the multi-multi-billion dollar black hole that was once a powerful insurance company AIG simmered rather than boiled because a) other bailout recipients like Citi and Bank of America are more visible and b) most average people have a hard time wrapping themselves around what AIG did (although blogger John Marshall has been quite good -- as always -- on this.[...]

Fire all the morons at AIG, Citygroup, B of A, et cetera, who got us into this mess, or they don't get a dime of our tax dollars. It might make for a few awkward moments down at the Capitol Grille, but it simply needs to be done.

Depressing? Here's the lighter side of the AIG fiasco.

Are You Feeling Like a Sucker, Yet