WARNING: stuff is not all that terrible

I was ready to write a post railing against the injustice of awarding bonuses to several members of AIG's Financial Products Unit, using millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars to do so. I was fully prepared to go on about the way that money should have been used, ready to go off Yahoo's front page and condemn Senator Chris Dodd (see "Dodd facing fresh political firestorm," Mar. 18) in all this reprehensible extravagant bonus muck. But the wonders of the ENDLESSLY FRUSTRATING Complicated Nature of Reality and Fact Checking have stopped me in my single-minded tracks.

And it is indeed complicated. So complicated, in fact, that CNN has opted to create a primer for what they've called an "ugly, ugly" bailout. They outline things nicely here.

From the beginning, the point was to keep AIG out of bankruptcy and afloat long enough so its dangerous financial bets could be unwound and its valuable units sold off to raise cash to pay back Uncle Sam. ...

Last Friday, AIG paid out about $165 million in bonus checks to employees who worked in the troubled AIG Financial Products unit. The bonuses were part of a larger package, some $450 million due to these employees in 2008-2009.

New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday said that 73 employees got more than $1 million each, including 11 people who don't even work for AIG anymore.

About the Yahoo! News story (the "scapegoat Dodd" angle played out at CNN too): it is completely incorrect.
Senator Dodd is not to blame, according to factcheck.org (full analysis):

The public record shows Dodd authored an amendment that would have prevented "any bonus" being paid to top executives of firms getting bailout money. It was the White House and the Treasury Department that insisted Dodd's amendment be watered down to apply only to bonuses paid under agreements signed in the past five weeks. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has taken public responsibility for that.

... so it looks like Geithner is either stretching the truth, or very, very bad at his job, if this bit from the previously-mentioned CNN Money is of any merit. (Hint: it is.)

Treasury chief Tim Geithner says he found out about the bonuses last week, although AIG revealed in regulatory filings last year that it was giving such bonuses. The contracts had been set up months before the government became a nearly 80% owner in the company. Treasury's lawyers said it would be legally difficult to block the bonuses.

Let's talk about money.

Look. According to google's calculator, 165 million divided by 170 billion = 0.000970588235.

To get the percentage of how much of our bailout money is taxpayer money, multiply that by 100.

0.000970588235 times 100 = 0.0970588235% of the bailout money.

This is $165 million.

$165,000,000

This is $170 billion.

$170,000,000,000

This is $2 trillion.

$2,000,000,000,000

I cannot even picture numbers this big, which is why the folks at mint.com put this ingenious series of images together. You see, the Fed is racking up another trillion dollars in bonds in order to inflate the economy, we're throwing money at our ongoing war on terror, and in the meantime we're lopping off teachers, books, scholarships and letting our infrastructure go to shit. And you know what? AIG sounds like a big enough monster in which to direct my anger.

Only it isn't one simple monster.

I leave you with the maddeningly logical comments of reddit user aGorilla , bestof'd here.

About the current CEO:

• He's being paid 1 dollar a year.
• He gets no bonuses, either way.
• He gets no stocks.
• He didn't sign these contracts, he inherited them.
  

About the people who tanked AIG:

• They are gone.
• They were few.
  

About the people who received the bonuses:

• They did not kill AIG
• They were offered these bonuses last year, to stay for another year, and clean up the mess.
• They reduced $2.7 trillion of shit to $1.6 trillion of shit.
  

About the bonuses:

• They are less than .1% of the bailout money.
  
• They were offered last year, to retain people until they cleaned up the mess.
• They were NOT meant to retain people for next year.
  

What if we didn't pay them?

• The people who are (successfully) cleaning up the mess, would leave.
• Then, they would sue (rightfully so).
• AIG would have to try to replace them, while trying to prevent losses on the suddenly 'unmanaged' accounts.
• AIG might be forced into bankruptcy, for defaulting (aka: we lose).
• AIG might survive, but take further losses, and need more help (aka: we lose).
  

This is where I heave a big sigh and tear out some of my hair.