AIG – The Circus, Government as theatre, and the Keystone Cops

Those are what come to mind regarding all the uproar about the AIG retention bonuses that were recently paid (For those of you not familiar with the Keystone Cops, they were clumsy, foolish, silly, characters in the Black and White silent film era). I watched the House committee interview Mr. Liddy the CEO of AIG which was a joke. Mr. Liddy is someone who has volunteered for $1.00 per year to solve the problems at AIG and help get a return on the taxpayer’s money (a good guy). He was treated as some type of evil villain (bad guy). I have watched television and heard countless “experts” and so called “informed” people share their opinions which range from asking the AIG executives to commit suicide, to it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the big picture. In almost all instances opinions have been shared from people without any material specific knowledge or understanding of this issue.



The people who do have material knowledge including Mr. Obama, Mr. Geithner, Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, and those additional committee members who drafted the stimulus and AIG bail out bills are all saying a hypocritical “I am Shocked” like the clip from Casablanca. Mr. Obama is living up to his philosophy of never letting a good crisis go to waste and by threatening more regulation of compensation on Wall Street which the mere mention of it will delay the economic recovery even longer than his misguided spending bills already have. The Congress passing a punitive 90% tax bill, using taxes as a weapon to attack a group of people they don’t like is the most dangerous development to date.

It seems to me to be like an instance where a hurricane has hit a home (US), damaged the roof (banking system), the floors are flooded (economy), and the electricity is out (financial markets) and rather than prioritize and fix the most important problems first the administration and Democrat led congress have been using credit cards to order wallpaper, air freshener, new furniture, and a new room addition to be a greenhouse. One young inexperienced man has been hired to fix the roof and he has no helpers and doesn’t know where to begin. The floors are beginning to dry out, but because the roof still leaks they get wet again.

Hopefully some competent, serious, people will emerge and bring some sense to our government. I took a personal development course in the past and we talked about the idea that there are things that you know and you know that you know them (I know how to ride a bike). There are also things that you know, that you don’t know (I can’t perform surgery). Then there are things that you don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know. There are also things that you think you know, but you are just plain wrong. It seems to me that this administration, and the Democrat led congress is in the zone of the latter two.