Bonus mess reflects poorly on all involved

It wasn't supposed to turn out that way, but the AIG bonus situation is turning out to taint everybody who even sticks his hand into the jar. Obama jumped in with pandering, but several observers are now saying that part of the fallout will include making things even more difficult than expected when it comes either to gettingn his budget passed or getting further stimulus packages approved. This Register editorial mentions a few who came off stinking like week-old fish, and how they deserved opprobrium.

It's still a bit mysterious to me why this particular set of bonuses, admittedly hardly typical corporate practice, set off such a firestorm. I suspect there's something kinda cumulative going on. People have been having second thoughts about the whole magilla -- bailouts, pork spending called stimulus, baigger spending yet, failure to get serious about the bank crisis -- and were just ready to explode in disapproval. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

AIG bonuses -- another view

Daniel Drezner, of Tufts and Foreign Policy magazine, has a nice little post (that agrees with my views expressed earlier) that the AIG bonus issue involves much more distraction than substance. Of course it reflected a certain cluelessness on the part of AIG as to how it would play out -- though in truth it is always difficult to predict what will catch public attention and resonate, even for people who have been at the game a long time -- and of course there's a certain outrageousness to giving the bonuses to people who made huge mistakes. But the real outrage is the bailout itself, compared to which the bonus money is minuscule.