Banking Law

Sen. Charles Grassley is playing a deadly game. I never believed for an instant that he was literally advocating that AIG executives commit suicide. However, there's no question that he's playing on the public's anger, riding it like Laird Hamilton on the Banzai Pipeline, and attempting to steer that anger away from he and his colleagues of both political parties. In this practice, he's in "good" company.

Barney Rubble Frank and Chris Evert Dodd hopped up on this soapbox and ranted with their usual abandon.

"I warned them this would be met with an unprecedented level of outrage," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the banking committee and part of a group of senators who pressed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to stop the bonuses, said Monday.

Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that it may be time to fire some people at the insurance giant.

"These people may have a right to their bonuses, but they don't have a right to their jobs forever," Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, said on NBC's "Today" program.

"The federal government now is the 80 percent owner (of AIG)," Frank said. "These bonuses are going to people who screwed this thing up enormously. Since the federal government now essentially owns that company, maybe it's time to fire some people."

Even "The One" has been front and center with expressions of his "outrage" at bonuses paid to AIG employees.

?Under these circumstances, it?s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. I mean, how do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?? Obama said.

?In the last six months, AIG has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury, and I?ve asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.

?I want ? I want everybody to be clear that Secretary Geithner has been on the case.?

The last utterance prompted Housing Wire's Paul Jackson to comment wryly,"Oh, good. Geithner?s on the case. We can all rest easy now."

While The Washington Post opined that the controversy over the bonuses was "blowing back" on Obama, and could very well lead to no more bailout funds being authorized by Congress, the "blow back" on The Change We Waited For is nothing compared to what I think awaits members of Congress, including Grassley and his fellow Republicans. We got more than a taste of it in various comments sections of newspaper sites and blogs today, and Rod Dreher, editorial writer for The Dallas Morning News, and a writer who certainly leans right, fanned the flames of the backfires today on his blog while discussing Grassley's call for resignation or death.

But he inadvertently raises a point worth pondering if failed top financial executives should consider killing themselves in shame over their disastrous governance of their companies, why shouldn't failed top politicians apply the same standard to themselves? Why wouldn't they at least consider putting a bullet in the brains of their careers? America has been badly governed, at least on the financial front, for some time now. How many US senators are lining up to quit in self-disgust?

A large segment of the public is wising up to having been duped. Yes, Joe Six pack is angry at tone-deaf clowns like those running AIG, as well as at greed-heads and others among the class of those who believe that they're entitled to wealth beyond all dreams of avarice simply because, you know, they simply ARE! As this crisis drags on, and people under the top echelons of the upper class of this country continue to feel like they've been screwed without even dinner and a movie, they'll support the government's efforts to inflict pain on all kinds of convenient scapegoats.

At the same time, I think that "average folks" are as disgusted with the politicians and their role in creating the current "situation." Especially angry are the vast majority of Americans who aren't in default on their loans, but might be some day soon if the layoffs continue, and who feel that "The Watchmen" were blind, corrupt, inept, or all of the above. A guy named Robespierre unleashed a reign of terror on his enemies during transformational times, thought he could control it, but it turned on him and his crew. He tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, failed miserably, and spent the last few hours of his life with his jaw hanging off his face before the new powers-that-were chopped his head off.

That's the flip side of national leaders stoking the public's anger, then using it to pursue their own agenda. We're supposed to have national leaders who lead. Instead, we have venal, feckless, cynical, snake oil salesmen who follow and feed the public's emotional reactions. They try to stoke the hunger of the public to lash out, then throw it red meat, sacrifice others, and hope that they themselves are spared.

I wouldn't count on it working for long, Chuck, Chris, and Barney. Sooner or later, your turn is coming.