In follow-up to the AIG Did Nothing Wrong article, AIG just paid out another 100 million dollars in bonuses except this time there was no major government hype to slap AIG on the wrist. I wonder why?
Well, it’s directly related to the reason stated in my prior article about the initial bonus payout that was made public last year in 2009. Here it is as I stated last March:
“… the government was already privy to AIG’s plan to payout bonuses months in advance. For that reason, the government’s apparent outrage seems to be a sham. Their scrutiny is for the sake of appearing vigilant of corporate use of taxpayer dollars – a move that will help taxpayers feel that their money is under the watchful eye of the administration.”
The government’s reaction and the media fiasco were a ploy, a front, and a public relations stunt to cast the illusion that the government would be vigilant of the corporate state. After all, AIG was propped up by the taxpayers’ dollars so the public’s outrage at AIG’s decision to use taxpayer funds to line their own pockets is certainly justified. In light of that outrage, it was handled by the government and media tagteam with sympathy and agreement:
- The Sympathy
The government and the media sympathized with the public’s dissatisfaction in a superficial way.
- The Agreement
They wiped the tears from the public eye and told everyone (in essence) that, “things will be alright, we’ll make sure [AIG/ bailed out corporations] don’t do this again. They’ve got a lot of nerve spending your money like this and we’re just as mad as you are”.
- The Solution
The people sobbed and had their eyes patted with public relations kleenex, trustingly nodded their head to the assurance that it wouldn’t happen like that again. AIG actually ended up paying back bonuses and it looked like a victory in favor of the public’s sentiment. Triumphant at last.
Meanwhile the government and media zoomed in on the 165 million dollars of the 170 billion paid last year. That was a a petty 0.097% of the total bailout money given at the time. This helped them ignoring the question of how the rest was being spent. They pretended to scrutinize the hell out of that fraction of money and gave the notion of condemning the use of the funds and all the while there were billions more taxpayer dollars in queue for AIG with no viable measures in place to prevent expenditures such as bonus payouts from happening again.
So it happened again, as expected.
Except this time I haven’t heard of any presidential press conferences of condemnation. In fact, there was never any real condemnation in the first place. It was all just a ploy to make you think your opinion mattered.
