News: Shrugging

The big news story is how bailed-out insurance giant AIG paid out bonuses to its employees. Plenty of pictures of Congress grilling AIG execs and threatening all sorts of knee-jerk reactions that couldn't possibly be executed, at least if the judge follows basic contract law. Note that it was painfully obvious to the government before the bailout that these bonuses would be paid.

As Breda and many others have pointed out, this is starting to get us into "theater of the absurd" territory. After all, the Feds haven't been in the black for awhile. Why don't they give back their compensation? Not just the politicians, but all those mid and upper-level bureaucrats. AIG may be being bailed out by the government, but the government's being bailed out by us.

It all reminds me of "Atlas Shrugged," when the People's State of Mexico finds out that the copper mine that it nationalized is worthless. Before having the taxpayers take an 80% stake in AIG, maybe we should've peeked inside the copper mine to see what was there and how the mine was run.