It's called balance MM. I think we all agree that banks shouldn't be able to leverage 30 to 1 and stack a hedge fund on top of a multinational business, but limiting executive pay is terrible and anti constitutional.

Should have seen it coming. How dare the rich be rich when there are poor people out there? Socialism will even it all out.

Bullsh!t, the government vote themselves pay raises and they get plenty of bonus money, don't fool yourself.
You just don't hear about it because its under the table, lobbyists, etc.
The government is the only part of the economy that grew in at least December when many private companies are streamlining.

Come on.......that's quite the first step down that slope. Having the government oversee the industry is rather like the fox watching the chicken house. Who will oversee the campaign contributions that companies like AIG made to politicians? Who will oversee the Congressional pay raises they will get for being as Barney Frank would describe, "incompetent"?

Moving into private industry to regulate pay while proposing a pay for performance system for teachers is laughable and shows to me that Obama knows little of human behavior or motivation.

It's a little late for that, Red. Maybe the TARP architects, including Geithner and Dodd should have considered that earlier. So now what? For a solid week, the politicians have been bloviating ad nauseam about their "outrage" at AIG for having the temerity to honor contractual obligations that predated any bailout. AIG now owes us, the taxpayers, about $180 Billion and it appears that everyone would like nothing better than to throw those slimy bastards under the bus. Great plan. Of course, you can kiss that $180B bye bye. But, suppose the mortgage securities market stabilizes and those no good MFers that still work at AIGFP manage to wind down the remaining CDS exposure (which in one year has been reduced by more than half). What then? I'll tell you. Uncle Sam gets all of it's money back with interest. Why would our great leaders want anything other than a complete recovery in order to cash in on their investment? But hey. All is not lost. I see some of those AIGFP criminals (posing as husbands and fathers in their ill gotten mansions) actually returned $30 Million of those "bonuses". Great job guys! I guess now that we've banked that 1/100th of the loans we can cut them loose now and write off the other $179,970,000,000.

By the way. As of last week, I no longer work for AIG so it's no skin off my back.

Did you tell everyone on Pine St. to suck it before you left like I did... under your breath with no jestures to imply disrespect.

No, because this is a great company to work for. The core insurance divisions have been removed from beneath the AIG, Inc. umbrella and are a separate, autonomous corporation known as AIU Holdings, Inc. I still have an office on the 54th floor of 70 Pine.

You know, Red, there is so much misinformation out there that I truly don't know what to believe. I don't think public money is being spent on executives. What I think is that the entire mess was ill-conceived and too hastily implemented with no oversight and the public just knows that something smells rotten and they are mad at everybody. The politicians have, thus far, managed to deflect that criticism to AIG, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Now another trillion is being printed to buy up those toxic assets which will further weaken the dollar as well as propping up banks that are hurting due to bad lending practices and putting them on a level playing field with those institutions that ran their businesses properly and now have to compete with businesses that a free market system would have eliminated. This is not good, Red. Things are going to hell in a handbasket and all this administration knows how to do is to keep spending.