Ooops that’s 3 things so Obama will have to multitask. Maybe Michelle can help him.

Interesting and timely article titled The Art of The Distraction in today’s NYTimes about how easily we can be distracted by the side-story of AIG bonuses which, in the grand schema of things, is just a nit.

The article quotes Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod as lamenting:

This is the kind of issue that Washington chases like catnip. What would be a mistake would be to get so distracted by the catnip-chasers that we lose our own path.”

Then after fleshing out various aspects of people’s desire for closure, reduction of everything to simple good and evil, the need for blame etc. the article closes with another quote from Axlerod:

He has a difficult job because he has to explain to the American people, who are furious, why we need to maintain a strong functioning system of credit so that people can get loans, businesses can get loans. A the same time, he has to explain to Wall Street why people are legitimately outraged by what they have done. “

I wonder whether some of the criticisms of Obama as OBambi made during the campaign were not prescient. The sense of balance inherent in those remarks seems a bit out of kilter to me. Let me see…the financial future of families and even their elderly parents vs. the lesson in self-awareness of a small clique of filthy rich greedy bastards and those they owned (who’d like for us to forget) in Congress so that they will get together, sing cum-ba-yah and behave more nicely on their own without having to be coerced into it.

This type of message just proves they still don’t get it and that they don’t believe a sufficient number of us are focused on the real problem and its resolution rather than the side-show.

Personally, I think the article takes a dim view of the depth of the pulbics concern by focusing on the most base of all possible reactions to a serious problem. It seems a negative interpretation at best.

What’s wrong with people wanting some security in life not at the mercy of a greedy few, with wanting the laws in palce to make them safe, and for those who dismantled those laws and for those who lobbied them to do so be punished…not for revenge but as an example of what will be done in the future to those who try to do the same…in order to make us all safer.

It couldn’t be that, could it?

You obviously have forgotten the scene in The Titanic when everyone was getting into the lifeboats. The MEN from the first class cabins were tossing the WOMEN and CHILDREN from the 2nd and 3rd class cabins out of the life boats they had situated in, into the freezing Atlantic waters, and placing themselves in those previously occupied seats.

To me a redux of that is far more likely than a putting down of brandy and cigars. Do you actually think they give two hoots about the common good? What is your evidence? Only if it is to keep them out of jail or away from vigilante squads…

Then they would only need to fear a strike. Well, they could still strike I suppose. Can anyone explain why these people or their functions are any more indispensible than…say, air traffic controllers?

Is anyone really even trying to make the case for why we would not be able to survive their ruffled feathers?

However, given our tendency to vent and our need for simple one-dimensional villians we are once again lunging for the most readily available scapegoats. Much more of our future tax money given to AIG was given to foreign financial institutions than to bonuses.

Barney Frank makes the argument that, in a sense, the taxpayers “own” the bailed out corporations. “In a sense” is just a little too open-ended for me. This is yet another reason why something should have been nailed down…with this nebulous sense of ownership firmed up a bit. Hmmmm…maybe I will only “in a sense” pay my taxes come April.

Would there be bonuses? Probably.

But I saw a chart yesterday. Of that $165 million figure, it showed that a clear majority was to be paid in chunks of more than a million dollars each. And at that point, I ceased to be impressed by any of the people whining about those who might have to do without their bonuses.

I wonder, in what percentile does a bonus of $250,000 or more put these “under the bus” whiners?

(Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)

Congress’s feigned indignation at the behavior of financial firms is laughable given that without the go-ahead light from Congress it couldn’t have happened. Congress is, finally, the real culprit and I think the American people get it, don’t like it and may finally take steps toward reforming the institution.