What? Wait a minute...

We're bailing out AIG?

Bailing out AIG, to the tune of $85 billion dollars?

$85 billion dollars loaned on shakey collateral?


Shouldn't I get to vote on this, at least? I mean ignore the outcome of the vote if you must, but couldn't I at least vote on my share of an $85 billion dollar loan?

Could I at least vote on whether anybody at AIG who made more than $50,000 last year has to work for free for the next few months. Or vote on whether or not folks had to return their bonus for last years "success"? Could I have a say as to whether the management team at AIG had to return their stimulus checks, at least? If share-holders needed to return half of their dividends?


I mean sure, the money has probably already paid for vacations, boats or beach houses.

Can't I get some sort of satisfaction in knowing that the bastards who put the plane into a nose-dive have to work weekends, for a while?


I guess if anybody had asked, I might ask that my portion of the front for a $858 billion dollar loan buy a fire truck, or go to some computers for a school, or was the raise for some poor schmuck who has done three tours in Iraq.

Instead I get my share of 80% of a company that has been driven into the shitter? And my only possible return is that it might not default, even under Fed control?

Perhaps I would have rather ridden this thing into the ground. Perhaps I would like those half-wit AIG MBA's to get jobs filling sand bags in Afganistan.


It could be that I would rather see the market genuinely adjust itself - than bail out the greedy shits which destroyed it.

It wouldn't be pretty, but hell, even a Roosevelt style back to work initiative would probably cost the same as the ante for an $85 billion loan - and we would get some rebuilt infrastructure out of the deal. I could be fine with communism, as long as we were straight up and honest about our intentions.

But if we are running a free market system, shouldn't the bullshit be forced to take a flush down the bowl? That would be a correction, at least - not a crutch to prop up the tipping shit pile.

Hasn't the right been saying, for years, that we couldn't trust the Fed to run something so costly as managed health care? Are we saying that the Fed should be able to manage the assets of a multi-national, multi-tier financial and insurance business? Doesn't that seem a contridiction?

I mean we are talking about $85 billion dollars!