Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, declared in a CBS television interview, "The easy thing would be to just say, you know, ‘Off with their heads,' and violate the contracts. But you have to think about the consequences of breaking contracts for the overall system of law."
With this turn of phrase invoking the guillotine, Summers inadvertently put his finger on an essential element of the AIG bonuses furor. Like the nobility at the time of the French Revolution, America's ruling financial oligarchy is an entirely parasitic social layer, whose relentless defense of its wealth and privileges stands as the basic impediment to meeting the most basic needs of society as a whole.
In reality, the AIG bonuses are hardly an aberration. Citigroup's CEO Vikram Pandit hauled in $10.82 million of compensation in 2008, Reuters reported Monday. This payout came as the bank received a $45 billion capital injection from the US government.
Bank of America Corp. CEO Kenneth Lewis fared only slightly worse, getting $9.96 million as his bank also received $45 billion in bailout funds.
Moreover, these obscene pay packages and bonuses are only a small part of the money handed out to the financial elite.
And then there's this opinion piece, which basically says "Your money or your life."
What is wrong with this country is the massive wealth transfer upward to fewer and fewer hands while everybody else is forced into impoverishment because of it. By rights the bonuses should be denied, but who is bribing our politicians to continue with the obscene handouts? The same economic elite.
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