The Times article was interesting-what was left unsaid is that many large publicly traded financial firms are not businesses. In many cases the bonuses paid out exceed the profits-the shareholders do not control the business in any way. Theoretically, there should never be a need for the public or politicians to complain about excessive employee compensation at a business-upper management would control expenses (including payroll) as they manage the business-this is not happening and not just at AIG. This really cannot be fixed-it is the Wall Street culture-were this to infect XOM, CVX or COP, as an example, billions of dollars in bonuses would be paid out (looted from the owners) and those would need bailouts-it hasn't happened as the corporate culture is different. Basically, Wall Street is based on the Scam, the Grift and when you hire Grifters to work for you or watch over your capital they will do their best to steal it every time. So now the money isn't just being stolen from the owners, now the taxpayers are being looted, with the promise from the Chosen One that someday this will end when the Grifters are finally sated. Maybe, but by that time the USA will have been permanently wounded economically.

I think the public may be just beginning to understand what's happening. One wonders where the outrage will end...

With the Banksters having all the money and assets and the working stiffs still mumbling and grumbling as they walk to the unemployment office?

I would highly recommend reading the Rolling Stone story The Big Takeover. An excerpt:

In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations.

In other words, it's AIG's rip-roaringly shitty business model writ almost inconceivably massive — to echo Geithner, a huge, complex global company attached to a very complicated investment bank/hedge fund that's been allowed to build up without adult supervision. How much of what kinds of crap is actually on our balance sheet, and what did we pay for it? When exactly will the rent come due, when will the money run out? Does anyone know what the hell is going on? And on the linear spectrum of capitalism to socialism, where exactly are we now? Is there a dictionary word that even describes what we are now? It would be funny, if it weren't such a nightmare.

(Moving up my comment to a current thread)

It took some time to read the http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover
article and I forgot where the original link were but it fits this subject.

How much substance is there in the article?

Is it correct that government bailouts and federal bank lending is creating a disadvantage for small banks with lower credit risks and a higher portion of staff that keeps track of their customers and a very large advantage for giant banks with large credit risks and very little personal knowledge about their customers?

Is your financial system realy contracting around your least efficient entities?

I dont care much about who runs the show in USA but if someting like this is correct you ought to get a concentration of power and responsibility that no human or single company can handle. If such a trend runs to completion it would result in the extinction of one of the major feedback mechanisms that creates the complex free market that fine tunes the US economy and a large part of the global economy.

Supreme power withouth the ability to rule wisely since it is beyond the capacity of a human or a group of humans to do what a diverse market full of manny humans do. This is realy scary stuff if you are headed anyway near this direction!