Like an awful lot of people, some of whom loathe each others' politics, I'm rankled by the huge bonuses that AIG has paid or is paying to its current and past execs. This is kind of an ongoing outrage with me. For at least the last decade, every time I work for a huge corporation or even read about the inner workings of one, I see the following situation: Some executive type came in, did absolutely nothing right and (often) many things that harmed the firm…then got out with salary, bonuses and maybe even a golden parachute, altogether totalling many millions of dollars.
And that isn't even the most annoying thing. The most annoying thing is that in every one of those companies, you could see this ongoing attempt to shave a few crucial bucks off the take-home paychecks of competent, hard-working lower ranked employees. It's almost like the janitors have to lose their health insurance to pay for the severance package of some incompetent vice-president. Clearly, a lot of stockholders are unaware this is happening at their companies…and a lot didn't care, as long as the price of that stock was going up.
Still, amidst all this outrage, I find my opinion drifting in the direction voiced here by Nate Silver. Mr. Silver thinks we're on the verge of warping the Rule of Law to renege on what were, at the time they were made, perfectly valid contracts. That bothers me, too. Everything about this whole mess bothers me.