Say Anything Blog

Forget that these companies are in the private sector, and that the government has no more business dictating compensation than it has business dictating product prices.  The public is outrageously outraged about these bailed out companies paying big bonuses and salaries and so Obama is going to do something about it.

President Obama vowed to try to stop the faltering insurance giant American International Group from paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to executives, as the administration scrambled to avert a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street that could complicate Mr. Obama’s economic recovery agenda.
“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

In strongly-worded remarks delivered in the White House East Room before small business owners, Mr. Obama called A.I.G. “a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.”

“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay,” Mr. Obama said. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?”

There are two things going on here.  First, the bailouts are a flop.  They’re not working and the public is angry about them.  So in order to deflect that anger from the people who supported giving these companies our tax dollars (Obama and our other political leaders) they focus on demonizing the companies that are misspending the money.  And they deserve demonizing, but they never could have spent the money if the politicians hadn’t given it to them in the first place.

Second, this is a power grab.  Now that these companies that took the bailouts and “stimulus” money are on the hook, Obama and the other big government types are going to use the money as leverage to enact more government control.  In this instance, to control wages.

Obama isn’t saving the economy.  He’s expanding and consolidating the government’s power over the economy.