Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Holman Jenkins - The Real AIG Disgrace
I think this bonus outrage is a smokescreen.
The media is hyping the outrage, while incompetently or willingly ignoring that our politicians are complicit...
The media is hyping the outrage, while incompetently or willingly ignoring that our politicians are complicit...
In the Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins Jr writes about some things we're not hearing elsewhere:
"Tim Geithner is rightly on the hot seat for saying he didn't know about the bonuses until just weeks ago -- because he should have quelled this furor before it ever got started. Instead he played dumb and climbed aboard the outrage bandwagon -- and let Mr. Obama do the same.
There is not a shred of justice in the hysteria that followed. As AIG chief Ed Liddy explained on the Hill last week, the people receiving retention bonuses were not the same people who launched AIG's unhedged housing bets that brought the company down. Those people were gone. Their pay is already being clawed back.
Those who remained had been asked a year ago to stay and work themselves out of a job. In accepting the terms offered to them, they committed no offense (say, failing to pay taxes)."
