AIG BONUSES: Tom Maguire comforts Josh Marshall and makes some observations of his own.
UPDATE: Jim Geraghty:
Despite this administration’s reflexive instinct to talk about the problems it inherited, the fourth round of AIG’s government assistance — an additional $30 billion — was approved March 2.
Why couldn’t someone at Treasury* have made that assistance contingent on not handing out additional bonuses to managers who put the company in this hole?
* I suppose it might help to have someone besides Tim Geithner working at the Treasury Department, to help manage issues like these . . .
We’re seeing management by headline — and the bonuses weren’t in the headlines on March 2.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Horse; barn door:
Two details on those AIG bonuses just came out. First, according to the Wall Street Journal, the bonus checks went out on Friday. In other words, AIG no longer has the money.
Second, from CNBC: “Many of the employees who received bonuses are not American and may not care that American taxpayers are outraged over the incident.”
Another bang-up performance from the Treasury Department.