Since the government owns most of AIG and will be giving them at least $30 billion more, isn’t the government, in effect, using bailout money to finance the taxes on these bonuses?!!

Also, these bonuses were guaranteed, which means they had no performance-generating incentive at all. The only incentive they created was not to leave AIG. And the plan covered 400 out of 450 people at AIG Financial Products – I find it hard to believe they were all critical.

That said, there is some chance that the public/private partnership will actually help clean up bank balance sheets. My biggest worry is that it will be too complicated to actually have much of an effect.

On the contrary, I’m criticizing him for continuing the Bush policy basically unchanged, to the point that I’m satisfied he has taken full personal possession of it, so that we now have the Bush/Obama bailout policy.

As for the contention that Obama inherited a bad situation and has to be given time to find a new solution, this is disproved by the fact that he appointed Summers and Geithner (and apparently wanted Rubin) as his top economic cadres.

Given the facts that these personnel have spent their careers going back to the Clinton administration in the service of corporatism, that they went to heroic lengths to create an almost completely unregulated finance “industry” where all endeavor could be freely devoted to pyramid schemes and looting, which led directly and predictably to the global destruction we’re now experiencing, and that Geithner was at ground zero in the conception and execution of this bailout campaign, which is further loot conveyance; given these facts, that Obama evidently never for a second considered any alternative to these personnel and this policy is strong evidence that this is his ideology and his policy as well.

(The only alternative is that he’s in over his head and doesn’t know what he’s doing.)

Corporatism was the fundamental ideology of Clinton and Bush, while the bailout conveyance is the policy of Bush and Obama. The personnel are the constant thread running through all three.

Therefore I conclude that the ideology is also a constant, and the bailouts are endemic to the common ideology.

I’d love to see Obama radically change his ideological, policy, and personnel direction, but I can only go on the evidence we have. He was elected promising “Change”, and then he trotted out a team of retreads (not just on eceonomic policy, by the way).

I am not attacking your saying something of this ilk more than any other, but if we take the Way Back Machine into pre-Jan 20th, we saw an administration THEN that wasn’t lifting a finger in any way other than corporatist, and for the most part wasn’t lifting ANY finger. And talk about ideology!

I am not terribly happy with the seeming procrastination in the WH and hoping against hope that something magical will happen – but I am not at all certain that this is the case. Obama has only been there for 9 weeks, for heaven’s sake. Bush had 3 months at least, to get this straightened out, and in that time, all he did was give away the TARP money with little or no strings and no transparency, and then went and sat on his ass, and wouldn’t let ANYONE know WTF was going on.

NOW we have at least some transparency, and we are seeing them, warts and all. So what if they aren’t handling it perfectly? They have not figured out the “Open Sesame” for getting out of this yet? No one else has, either.

Obama in this is like a reliever in baseball coming in in the top of the 9th inning down 3 runs already, with no outs, the bases loaded and a 3-0 count on the batter, and the league’s best hitter at the plate, to boot. And the season is riding on this game. The previous pitcher walked the bases loaded and had a 3-0 count on the batter when he left. Any mistake at all just makes the situation worse. The hitters hope he can hold them to at least 1 run, so they can maybe find some way to manufacture a rally in the bottom of the 9th. Geithner is the catcher, and he is calling for a fastball in tight. Bernanke is the shortstop, and he is on the mound, too, encouraging Obama to buckle down and get this guy. We don’t know what Obama really wants to do, and we are all on the edge of our seats. Does he go with Geithner’s call? The infield is in for the play at the plate. Obama has to keep throwing strikes and hoping the batter will somehow hit one right at one of the infielders.

If he fails to throw strikes, he loses the game. Who is to blame then? The official scorer gives the loss to a previous pitcher. But the fans want a miracle pulled out of his butt. If he throws a hittable pitch, same thing – the season is lost. There is a reason that closers in baseball get the big bucks. They have to want to be in there with the game on the line.

Give Obama credit. He wanted to be in there. I hardly think they are sitting in the Oval Office with worry beads, hunched up and dreading the next bit of news. They are trying to find a path to solvency, for the whole world. I wonder what is taking them so long?

If they get us out of this mess, will we all give them credit? If it happens in 3 months, of course. How about 6 months? 9? 12? 18? 36?

With the Great Depression ALREADY 3 YEARS OLD, FDR came into office and it still took him almost four full years to get the economy somewhat on the right track. SEVEN years in total.

The meltdown happened in September, only half a year ago. Obama has not had 3 years of his predecessor’s failures to observe and see what did not work. Part of that is his predecessor didn’t do a damned thing. Obama has had the ball in his hands for only 9 WEEKS.

Cut the man some slack, people.

Do I think he has all the answers? No. But at least the man is on the field and willing to tackle it. If it doesn’t work the first time out, are we all going to label them losers? FDR said in 1933 (paraphrased), “We have to try SOMETHING. Several somethings. And we have to see how well they work. And if they don’t, we change what the heck we are doing, until we find things that DO work.” Some of FDR’s first efforts didn’t work out well at all. The idea that everything just went smoothly during and after the First 100 Days is a bunch of malarkey.

Some of Obama’s efforts won’t work out, either. But the man is intelligent enough and honest enough to admit it and go try something else. That much credit I give the man.

…Here’s the windup! And the pitch. . . .

We won’t know what works – if the batter puts the ball in play, or strikes out, or takes ball four – until he lets fly. The ball has not even left the pitcher’s hand yet, and everyone in the hot stove league is opining that he should be throwing this pitch or that pitch, high and tight or low and away. Just because he stepped off the rubber doesn’t mean he doesn’t have an idea what he wants to do.

It is easy to sit on the sidelines and kibitz. Everybody is trying to read his mind. Already people have been wrong about him. Many people said he wouldn’t deliver on his campaign promises. He’s done a remarkable job of proving them wrong. Many people said he was failing getting the Stimulus package through Congress. But here we sit, with it a done deal. A lot of people are bitching because it isn’t exactly what they would have done. Whoop-de-do, it isnt’ perfect legislation. That’s never happened before.

The man is getting things done. He hasn’t produced any miracles. I hope he doesn’t. I hope he does a yeoman’s job on it all, and gets something with substance and lasting solidity. I hope it stinks of sweat and dirt. Through all the mess, it can’t fail to have some grease on it.

If I had the weight of the world on my shoulders like that, I wouldn’t be sleeping worth a damn. With 6 billion people on the line, who would?