Sunday, March 15, 2009

The AIG bonuses-to-crooks story is worse than originally reported

It appeared Friday and yesterday that the bonuses the AIG managers gave to the executives of the financial products unit that bankrupted AIG was only a comparatively small $100 million or maybe $170 million. I say "comparatively" advisedly. That's all by itself a lot of money to be misused by bankers for their own personal gain.

The Wall Street Journal, however, has offered a new report. The true amount was at least $450 million. If my math is correct, that is 2.6% of the total $170 billion the treasury has put into AIG so far.

Or looking at it another way, taking my numbers from the Tax Foundation report as of July 2008, the average taxpayer who paid any income tax at all for 2007 paid $$7,543.07 in total income tax. That includes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, of course, but it is still a lot of money. If the bonuses to a few crooked and stupid financial products executives totaled $450,000,000, then each of the 135,719,160 taxpayers who paid uncle Sam any income tax at all paid the first $3.32 of their tax money directly to the crooked executives at AIG.

Talk about your fraud, waste and abuse!! The bakers at AIG make government at every level in America into pikers!

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