At least Gail Collins gets it:
Liddy, a retired insurance executive who took over A.I.G. six months ago at the behest of the Treasury Department, said he had asked most of those who got a bonus to give at least half back. This did not seem to calm the subcommittee members down very much, although the fact that Liddy is working without pay while getting mail from people who want to garrote him with piano wire seemed to have a slight dampening effect.
It is not particularly satisfying to complain about businessmen who answer their country’s call for $1 a year. However, Liddy does have three houses, which is one above the new quota.
Let’s complain about Barack Obama. Why doesn’t he sound angrier? Doesn’t he understand that his job right now is to be the Great Venter?
Sure he keeps saying he’s mad. But you can tell that he secretly thinks it’s crazy to obsess about $165 million in bonuses in a company that’s still got $1.6 trillion in toxic assets to unravel. “I don’t want to quell that anger. I want to channel our anger in a constructive way,” he said on Wednesday. Everybody knows constructively channeled anger doesn’t really count. It’s like diet pizza.
Collins can’t always pull-off effective snark, but this column gets the job done. Congress and the political media are engaged in a phony contest to prove who is the most outraged. It’s all manipulative bullshit. We have plenty of reason to be angry. But getting angry about $165 million in retention bonuses is like mourning the loss of your couch when your entire house has burned down. Beating up on Sen. Dodd, Sec. Geithner, and Barack Obama over this is just doing the bidding of Republicans and making you look like a dupe.
My advice is to do something to change the subject. Hasn’t a white women gone missing somewhere? Paging Gary Condit. Was that a shark attack I just saw?
Complaining about $175 million in bonuses when you have a quadrillion dollar problem (as idredit would say) is indeed silly.
It doesn’t mean however that the criticism of Geithner isn’t valid. He has always been part of the problem. He needs to go. He still keeps pulling out the same Paulson plays, the same ones he used as NY Fed chair.
Besides, if you’re looking for demagoguery and stupidity, let’s talk about the Republicans and the Wingnuts who are backing AIG.
It seems premature to be asking for Geithner’s resignation. He’s been in his position for what? Is it even two months?
Nope. It’ll be two months on the 26th. But for the MSM and the Republicans, when it comes to the Obama administration, two months is the new two years. Victor Davis Hanson declared the Obama presidency over after two weeks, after all. Why delay outrage when the rewards are so fruitful?
btw – Al Giordano gets it too.
When’s the damn First Dog getting there already?
This is totally off topic – and it’s very last minute – but there’s a St. Louis meetup at Left Bank Books tomorrow night for a book signing by Mike Lux. Happy Hour first. info here.
I’m angry that yer not angry, booman. c’mon get ANGRY…that always helps one think clearly.
Booman- I usually find your take on issues quite interesting, even when I disagree. But today I find myself a tad annoyed with your post. It’s worth looking at Josh Marshall’s take on this. Rather than ranting about the miniscule amount the bonuses or unpaid taxes represent, he’s trying to find the deeper issues the outrage taps into. One of which is the question, “Is anyone in control here?” Followed up by, “If so, who is it–the financial industry or the current administration?”
Marshall has been wholly and consistently wrong on this subject since he ventured into it. In fact, the premise of his question – is anyone in control here? – makes the point. It’s loaded, disingenuous, and designed to excite. The real question isn’t who’s in control, it’s where has the media – and its attendant “outrage” – been? The AIG bonuses have been public information for a month. Why the sudden surge of outrage from the MSM? Hmm. Is it at all possible that it’s just as Obama, Emanuel, and Axelrod have said? To distract from Obama’s ambitious and important budget campaign to drain enough political capital from him to make that battle tougher?
Marshall, etc. have been duped and are very busy making asses of themselves. Meanwhile, Rome burns.
“Marshall, etc. have been duped and are very busy making asses of themselves. Meanwhile, Rome burns.”
I don’t think it’s the budget. What it is is the lynch mob after Geithner.
Look at his blog. Today he was thinking about Volcker, and then says, “And that might require some real changes in policy and possibly in personnel too.”
Various LW blogs have been hunting for Geithner’s scalp because he didn’t immediately do what they wanted done: nationalize the troubled banks. No matter what bad things happen, no matter how tenuously they can be linked to Geithner, they’ll do the linking.
7 weeks in and TG didn’t bring the magic pony to fix the economy to their liking and they want his scalp. Assemble the circular firing squad.
Many felt strongly that Geithner and Summers were bad choices from the get go. Geithner hasn’t demonstrated strength or mastery of important detail. And it never dawned on anyone that allowing the bonuses wouldn’t bite them in the behind?
Take a look at Digby (Hullabaloo) and Jane Hamsher (Firedoglake). You think they’re in left field as well? Makind asses of themselves?
I do. Hamsher specializes in making an ass of herself. Digby, on the other hand, is excellent but off-track on this one (and apparently being updated on the tempest-in-a-teapot at regular intervals by Hamsher, which would explain it).
Well, if you have your viewpoint, as you clearly do, everything will fit–or not.
is that the companies are now public entities, and yet they continue to act like private entities.
We own 80 % of AIG, yet management seems to be of the opinion that nothing has changed.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, yet their money, the money of those who lost the jobs, is being used to fund the “retention” bonuses to a bunch of incompetent wankers.
What is so wrong about outrage in this situation? Yes, there are big fish to fry, but I AM FUCKING MAD about the bonuses.
Obama and Axelrod had better pay attention. If you cut, rearrange, restructure, and otherwise fuck with contracts for auto workers, ANYONE who works for the Federal government gets the same deal.
That means that ANY person who takes even a SINGLE PENNY of government money is a government employee.
NO BONUSES FOR INCOMPETENTS.
There was widespread agreement that both Geithner and Summers were disastrous appointments. Geithner hasn’t shown that he’s powerful or that he can handle free games complex issues. And nobody thought that giving out the bonuses would come back to haunt them?