The cries of outrage from President Barack Obama’s administration over the AIG bonuses seem pathetic.
The big bonuses paid to executives of AIG happened on their watch. They just didn't know about it and they should have. That's the plain fact.
We have changed administrations in Washington but apparently no party is immune to bureaucratic bungling. It goes on. No wonder the taxpayers are furious.
The president says he is as outraged as the people. But the fact is that neither he nor his advisers saw this coming. And that compounds the outrage the citizens of the United States feel.
A liberal expert on political demographics, Ruy Teixeira, told NPR: ''This is a debit on the Obama administration. But people generally feel that he is trying, and this, while it doesn't help, is unlikely to undermine that.''
The rights inherent in contracts make it impossible to revoke the bonuses already paid. That is a concept embedded in our constitution and legal system. The idea of withholding some of the bailout millions already promised AIG seems to be a possibility but the $170 billion already paid to AIG may be hard to recover.
So, while Congressmen may rant and point fingers and officials in the executive branch hide their heads in shame, the culture of greed in the financial community goes on. No matter how much outrage the politicians generate, it's the very morality of the system that cries out for reform and that is a difficult, if not impossible goal.
