How, exactly, does the yelling about the AIG bonus payments help stabilize our financial system? Yes, it's a lot of money, and no, it's hard to imagine how people in that CDS shop deserve a dime of it. So what? The Administration's economic leadership has been occupied with this tangent for three or four days. Don't they have a G20 summit to plan for, an auto bailout to arrange, a stabilization plan to design/announce/implement?
(An aside: we don't know how much of the money is commission for some sort of salespeople, which I actually think would be justifiable and even smart. Then again, if many of the recipients weren't in the CDS shop, that fact would probably have been leaked by now.)
This is a political exercise. Some participants are trying to embarrass wealth. Others are avoiding association with apparent greed and incompetence. There may also be an atavistic response to rage against this stuff rather than address financial complexities the politicians barely understand. All told, it's one more datum for the argument that we lack policy leadership.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment