“When you add a picture to a post it give you the option to specify a Link URL.”…

The President and his Treasury Secretary in cooperation with Congress allowed for the exclusion of the payments. They wrote the provision, stuffed in into a huge bill that neither the public or our representatives had time to read, much less debate and scrutinize, and signed it into LAW. No they want to undue the damage by throwing together a law that is possibly unconstitutional and definitely bad policy.

Consider this a tax on contracting. The primary risk is that Congress will use this and other controversies to weaken the mechanisms of private ordering, such as contractual rights that are at the core of our economic freedom and prosperity. Striking down contracts arbitrarily, because they have attracted public scorn or offend lawmakers in some way, puts at risk the making and enforcing agreements across the economy by reducing the certainty of ALL agreements.

Madison himself described the slippery slope that would result: The more the legislative branch interferes in private affairs, the more who will demand that it interfere in their affairs, to their advantage, and the less the role private agreements will play in economic life.

I think the confiscatory acts here are pretty much confined to the managers and staff of AIG. Thanks to their financial engineering AIG would be bankrupt save for funds it has received from the public treasury. None of these folks deserve or are entitled to receive any bonuses. If the consequences of capitalism are good enough for folks like us, then it is even more beneficial for the folks at AIG.

You are defending the indefensible.

When we were asked to support earmarks, what was the argument in defense of the spending? “Not all of it is wasteful. What seems wasteful to may be necessary for other. It's such a small percentage…and so on. When we were asked to support the mortgage bailout program, we worried about rewarding speculators and fraudulent borrowers and Larry Summers told us that that might happen, but in the end we would all benefit from the plan. How is this different.

I actually have no problem with the bonuses. I just wish that instead of acting 'shocked' and 'stunned' that the President and the administration would come out and EXPLAIN and DEFEND the decision to allow the bonuses. Sure, it will be uncomfortable and difficult, and it is a tough pill for many to swallow, even the President himself, but it is one of the hard choices they made on behalf of the American people.

The other side of the story.

The administration and government need experienced experts to help solve this crisis. These experts are found on Wall Street. The administration's plan to rid insolvent banks of toxic assets depends on a GOVERNMENT/WALL STREET PARTNERSHIP that will help ALL OF US.

First AIG Bonuses…then, what next? This type of confiscatory tax policy 'witch hunt' may satisfy many but it will not help untangle and solve the web on insolvency ensnaring our financial system. Which is the heart of the problem.

AIG's problems are our problems. This tax policy threatens to do substantial damage to other institutions being swept up in it. “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

As one critic writes:
“rolling this ex post tax out at the same time the Fed and Treasury are trying to encourage private investors to partner up with the government to get the credit markets moving again is insane. What investor needs the likely aggravation to follow? Who needs to be hauled in front of Barney Frank a year from now in order to be blasted as a profiteer who exploited our national crisis for his own profit, which Barney will then tax back? Who will be daft enough to come out of retirement as Liddy did to endure the abuse Liddy took?”

The WSJ also makes the point.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742023932678…

Right now it's AIG and Fannie Mae; later it will be Merrill and Citibank, and eventually it will be defense contractors, profiteering oil executives, or whomever the Congressional Dems wish to single out.

Hold up….I've received bonuses before and they were always taxed at 42% and I never ever ever never got a bonus in the vicinity of $100,000.

But the hope is that no one that will be affected by the 90% tax will actually take this to court because we all know if they do, they win.