AIG Bonus Imbroglio: $165 Million vs. $165 Billion

Joseph J. Cassano is a reprobate who deserves to spend the rest of his days in federal prison.

Two themes keep popping up in our daily bailout culture: bailout politics make for strange bedfellows and advantage commode.

The AIG bonus brouhaha is of the latter. I believe people understand the difference between $165 million and $165 billion, just as they understand the difference between $45 billion for Citigroup (C) and a $45 million private jet, and $45 billion for Bank of America (BAC) versus John Thain’s $35,000 commode with legs.

Certain issues resonate more deeply.

Particularly, with AIG, the outrage stems from the fact that we have been told the $165 billion was to prevent global financial collapse, while we all intuitively understand that the $165 million in bonuses were part of employment contracts agreed to BEFORE the failure of AIG.

Every single one of us has had a contractual promise broken against us and have been forced to live with ‘tough shit as the response. Or perhaps SOL. We all get it. This should have been shit out of luck for employees at AIG’s unregulated, financial products division. The affront is that because of our largesse, these AIG employees are shit IN luck.

Two particular sub-dramas are developing of import. (Not counting Senator Grassley first calling for AIG executives to committ hara-kiri, then, during his apology on national television, saying the phrase ’suck on the taxpayer tit.’ He didn’t opt for teet. He went boldly for tit or more likely it was a dementia moment and he thought he was back in high school. Make sure to watch the Keith Olbermann video below for the Grassley brilliance.)

Back to the two issues developing: the calls are growing for Geithner’s head and title, from Senator Shelby to Henry Blodgett to yours truly. In greatly descending order of importance. And the other kettle brewing is what I smelled and wrote about yesterday. The feigned White House outrage.

ABC and others are reporting tonight that Obama was told about the bonus payments Thursday afternoon and that Geithner knew all week and likely for much longer since he was the principal architect of the AIG bailout along with Henry Paulson.

I postulated yesterday, that Geithner would have simply needed to leak the news to the msm last week, and within 24 hours public outrage would have killed the payments. Instead he sat on the information until Thursday, and then the White House held it tightly until Saturday when someone leaked it to the New York Times.

Since that moment it has been spin city at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, including yesterday’s moment of Obama channeling Slick Willy Clinton in a speech that sounded like an AIG Clawback from the Big Guy, but was really just an attempt to ride the populism and deflect blame.

I’m too cynical to be so easily fooled. I knew the payments had already been made and Obama was just trying to catch the anti-AIG train before it threatened to run him over. It was lying at worst and disingenuous at best, and it is not a good sign for those who cherish the truth from our leaders.

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