Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

So we had an interesting discussion the other day in the locker room at the gym. We were talking about the news coverage on the bonuses of AIG executives. In a nut shell there were about 70 executives who got a total bonus payout of $160 million or so. That is roughly $228,000 for each one. Now, I am willing to agree that for a company going under bonuses are bad business but in the grand scheme this is not unusual and there is nothing criminal about it. Bad business yes, criminal no. Executives all over the country get paid way to much for doing way to little. So lets look at the truth, shall we?

The AIG guys have a legal right to that bonus as the company has contracts with them and they get paid. Don't get lost in the fact that it doesn't make sense to write that into the contract, it is there and that is all there is to it. Most large corporations are like that so this is nothing new. The only difference is that this tax payer money verses shareholders.

The real issue is not being addressed. All the media coverage and attention is focused on AIG so that we won't examine the bigger issue. Remember folks Congress just passed a $1 trillion bail out for companies that have been doing dumb things for years. So lets look at this in a way we can all understand. All these companies that are getting bailed out made really bad choices and did stupid things so Congress bails them out. AIG does something stupid, again, and all of a sudden there is outrage. The stupid thing was to bail them out to begin with. They were not responsible with money before the bail out what makes congress think they will be responsible with money after the bailout? The real idiots here are the ones in Washington DC and then ones who put them there.

What the media should be reporting on is that we just had a trillion dollars spent, with one of the narrowest margins possible, that will be paid off by my grand children and great grand children. Lets look at that number. When you wright it out it looks like this, $1,000,000,000,000! that is a lot of Zeros. There are 525,600 seconds in a year. If you divide one trillion by 525,600 that is 1.9 million years! A trillion seconds ago was 1.9 million years ago. Did T-REX count seconds? Now where should the outrage be $1 trillion or $160 million. Lets look at that in my world shall we. It would be like me going out and mortgaging the house to buy a $30,000 fishing boat and then scream at Lisa for giving $5.oo to one of the kids when they did not earn it. That 160 million is .00016 of the trillion they gave out. If this kind of outcry is launched aver the 160 million there should be a run on Washington right now with pitchforks and hatchets! The Capital building and White House should be in flames and a complete and total revolt going on in America!

George Bush spent more money then all the presidents before him combined. Obama is on track to double Bush. But hey, those damn AIG executives are stealing us blind!

No folks the truth is that as long as the attention can be put on the $5 the rest gets brushed aside like it just does not even exist. Just pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Keep an eye on the smoke and mirrors so you don't see what is really going on.