The real outrage in the AIG fiasco isn’t the struggling insurance giant‘s $165 million in bonus payments, said Larry Kudlow in National Review. It’s the way the Bush and Obama administration’s bungled the whole AIG bailout. This disgraceful episode “shows, once again, why the government shouldn't run anything, because it cannot run anything."
Obama's team has "made a complete shambles of the AIG bailout," no doubt, said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. But the real outrage here is that the contracts guaranteeing bonuses to a bunch of "cowboy securities traders living in Connecticut" are being talked about like they're sacred, while the "employment contracts involving hardworking men and women on Detroit's assembly lines are somehow less legally binding," and an impediment to economic progress.
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