AIG farce

The continuing farce over the AIG bonuses becomes more absurd with each passing day. From proposals to tax them at 90%, or for Liddy to plead for the recipients to return half, the utter lack of perspective makes it clear that this is nothing but a smokescreen.

$160 million dollars is less than one-thousandth of the $170 billion or so that has been funneled to Goldman Sachs and companions through AIG, the larger figure can now be conveniently ignored, and the fact that more hundreds of billions will be spent to patch over the mess remains unmentioned until it will be too late.

After only eight weeks, the Obama administration has run aground. Its conception of taking Bush's policies and tweaking them has failed utterly on the economic front, Geithner now has the same credibility as Paulson, that is, none, and seems unable to propose anything but continuing to fail. The guy needs to go, and quickly.

Bernanke also continues to merrily throw money into the system, the printing presses are running full steam:

As expected, the Fed kept its benchmark interest rate at virtually zero. But in a surprise, it dramatically increased the amount of money it will create out of thin air to thaw out the still-frozen credit markets that have cramped lending to consumers and businesses alike.Despite a trickle of encouraging economic data in the last few weeks, Fed officials have shown no readiness yet to cut back on their unprecedented measures to pump money into the economy.

That's one trillion hot off the presses, it will produce some market euphoria for a while, and then will need to be done again. I wonder when Wen will realize that the dollar is heading for the toilet?