So now Congress is going to go after the AIG bonuses, responding to the rage that most sentient beings are feeling right now about the whole question. One suggestion is that the Government simply impose a 100% tax on the sums received by A.I.G. bonus heads. This would seem to be a logical extension of the Government’s current policy of taking about 52% of all my income. Still, it’s a dramatic solution to the problem.

I’m just as mad any anybody else at those numbskulls at A.I.G., of course.  It really stinks. You have to wonder how a “retention bonus” is meant to affect the performance of a manager who has already left the organization. Like, that’s just stupid.

If you want to give me some bulls**t rationale for why you’re going to suck up billions of dollars and spew it out to your colleagues and pals, come up with something credible or at least appropriately truculent, like “We did it. We’re keeping it. If you don’t like it, fire us and pay us our contractually-mandated severance packages.”  That at least is a truthful presentation of the executive mind-set.

Still, you have to worry a little about the policy implications. Does the government – even in pursuit of fairness and equity – have the right to implement new, punitive laws against individuals who have displeased it, and Us? New laws that prevent such things happening in the future, no question. But laws that retroactively impose justice kind of make me nervous for some reason. 

In the case of A.I.G., the government owns 80% of the company now, so it’s easy simply to assert that We the People can pretty much do what we want. And maybe we should. There’s no question that taxpayers didn’t fork over all that money so that individuals could haul it away in shopping bags as they exited the building they helped to wreck.

But you’ve got to think that Business is in for a really rough ride from here on in. Sweeping in on the heels of what all these moron financial types and other brain-damaged economists have wrought will be  a host of new laws, new regulations, new ways to protect the nation and its citizens from the greed and collective criminal mind of Wall Street, its denizens and its running dogs. And we deserve whatever we get.

Newton’s Third Law states that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. He was talking about physics. But it’s equally applicable to less scientific stuff as well.

Terror, for instance, breeds repression and a more surveillant society, one more concerned about safety and security and less about personal liberty.  In the wake of 9/11, this country did many things out of anger, fear and a desire to hold those guilty accountable. Some were reasonable. Others, in retrospect, were not.  Equal and opposite reactions are not always as good as they first may appear. 

Bernie Madoff is not the only criminal who prowled Wall Street. In many ways, he’s just the fall guy, a dramatic extension of the way business was done every day in the big craps game. In these A.I.G. guys, we have a perfect example of the global business culture that ran things for a long time and still does. Their very presence cries out for retribution, and Newton must be served.

1. Remain cheerful.

2. In any event refrain from getting apoplectic more than 2.7 times per day. In public, anyhow. If, you know, possible. Unless it’s for a strategic reason.

3. Keep my job.

4. Lose no money in the stock market. If that means having nothing to do with the stock market, all the better.

5. Punch anybody who uses the word “derivative” without laughing, unless they’re talking about movies.

6. Employ no PowerPoint except in jest.

7. Have no drink “for the road.”

8. Continue to abjure MySpace and Facebook, recognizing that people who use them for business purposes are nerds. 

9. Wear comfortable shoes.

10. Ignore all predictions.

One of my very hostile but articulate readers, Mike from Spokane, gives me both barrels between the eyes this morning. I think Mike thinks I won’t publish it, because I’m a panty-waist business type swilling gin at breakfast. Here’s what he says:

Bing…with all due respect (as you recently stated to me), you have no idea what you’re frigging talking about. You, and corporate America, are so far removed from the realities of Main Street America, that you continue to confuse your personal financial comfort concerns with those of middle America.

I fully expect that you will delete all posts contrary to your limited and self-serving view, but at least you (or one of your corporate lackeys) will have to read statements that reflect what most of America regards as self-evident…that expanding and supporting corporate greed through taxpayer handouts for incompetence is no path out of the mess we’re in. Not much satisfaction from this end, but at least you, or one of your timorous syncophants, will know that your world has finally sunk below used car salesmen in terms of universal public esteem.

Finally, fearing being one step from flinging fries at the local ‘In&Out’ joint may play well while swilling $20 cocktails in some high-end Manhattan watering hole, but it is a daily reality for millions of Americans who invested billions in now collapsed 401K plans.

Mike, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you. But sometimes it’s hard to see things clearly with so much blood in your eye. I sent my corporate lackeys and timorous sycophants out of the room. This is between you and me.

First of all, this ”corporate America” that’s on a different plane that “Main Street America” is a myth. I have worked in theaters, as a cab driver, in small companies, large corporations and mega-watt global behemoths, and they are all the same. They are people working for a living. And in one and all, it’s the most dysfunctional that run the place. Whatever the gig, we work, we try to enjoy our jobs, and we go home. Guess where our homes are? Main Street.

Secondly, I come from Illinois. So I don’t want to hear a lot of pompous, self-aggrandizing bushwah about middle America, either. We all live here. We are all Americans. None of us are more American than any others. We are all equally American. Let’s move on.

I understand that you need to see people like me, because I sometimes wear a tie and work in an office, as rich, shallow mofos who deserve to be pilloried, in order to keep on feeling that righteous anger of yours. But in my opinion you’d do better to see all of us (except the very rich and unsuccessful putzes who whipped up this soggy mess) as citizens of the same troubled system. Everybody I know is very nervous about their jobs. Nobody I know has a pension. We worry about our stock price, and our families, and our friends, and what the hell is going to happen to us if the big companies that provide so many people with jobs aren’t helped out right now.

We don’t sympathize with the idiots who have gotten us all into such trouble. And we certainly don’t want THEM to benefit from any assistance that is given to these failing auto makers, banks, insurance companies, whatever. We just don’t want the entire ship to sink, taking the lives of all on board, because the captain and his crew are dolts, numbskulls and screw-ups, or because politicians, responding to the anger of their constituents, continue to follow instead of lead.

Take the miscreants out behind the barn! Line them up against the wall! Pepper them with heat-seeking projectiles! But when you’re done with that satisfying exercise, let’s try to save the American auto industry, the banks where we keep our money, and probably the mortgages of all those people who believed they could buy a home with no money down because a greedy guy in a suit told them they could.

Personally, at this point I’m not a big believer in the “free market” approach. It seems to benefit the guys in charge of the marketplace. And that’s not us. And by “us” I mean we, the people. And by the way: MY 401K blows, too.

Thanks for writing, Mike. Say hi to Spokane.

A couple of days ago, I was quite upset at what I perceived to be a wholesale disaster – the rejection of the bailout by a confused and vengeful House. A tsunami of comments poured in. Some of you agreed with me. A lot of you didn’t. This observation, from Steve in Charleston, West Virginia, was one of the most pointed and eloquent. “Sorry, Stanley,” he wrote, “but I’m not scared. Not even a little bit.” He went on:

Out here in the hinterlands where small business deals in cash rather than debt, local companies are not hurting. Banks are not folding. It’s harvest time and life is good. In fact, once the Schadenfreude at the demise of Wall Street has a chance to kick in, life couldn’t get much better.

There are quite a few of us out here who hate, loathe and despise everything that Wall Street has become, and we’re even less enthusiastic about Washington. The only politicians who apparently understand that are the ones who voted against the bailout. As far as we’re concerned, Wall Street can go to hell, and then maybe the rest of us can get to work on restoring this country to what it was before Wall Street slimed it.

There was much more of the same from a lot of people. Several things are clear from this. First, that many people’s hatred of the institutions that run our economy and our government is greater than their fear of societal collapse. Second, that public desire for vengeance at this time outstrips any empathy or concern they may have for the impact that this crisis may have on their fellow countrymen. Third, that a lot of folks believe that our economy can get along without the securities market and those who “manage” it. And that, finally, at this time in history, pretty much everybody has a solidified position on just about everything, and that any situations and facts that may intrude on their lives simply fortify their existing points of view.

So if you’re a Democrat, you feel the current crisis speaks to what the Republicans have done to us over the course of the last eight to thirty years. And if you’re a Republican, in spite of the fact that your party has been in power for a long time in all three branches of the Federal Government, you blame liberals, Democrats, oligarchs, and big-spending government hotshots for our dilemmas. If you believe that regulation is necessary to keep crooks and nitwits from running the show, you still believe that. If you think the “free markets” should operate, wherever those might be, you feel even more strongly that you are right.

So events do nothing to moderate or change anybody’s point of view. This is kind of depressing for all of us, I think. It’s hard when you see something dramatic happen and think “Aha!”… and then find that your adversaries are shaking the very same news in your face triumphantly and saying, “Oho!”

I, on the other hand, am a flexible fellow. I’ve been looking at my initial opinion and trying to decide where I was wrong. A lot of you are very persuasive.

See, I thought that a widespread panic leading to tens of thousands of job losses in the financial sector were bad for not just Wall Street, but the nation that has trillions of dollars invested there.

I thought that a banking system in free fall, draining the FDIC of all its resources and ultimately placing all our savings and checking accounts at risk, was detrimental to everybody, not just the fat cats who have screwed everything up.

I thought a limit on the executive compensation at firms applying for a bailout, and assistance for homeowners who might be forced to default on their mortgages, was good. I see a lot of you disagree. Many of you seem to have an image in your mind, when you hear the word “defaulting home owners,” of rapacious, greedy losers who never had any intention of paying off their mortgages. In fact, there’s just as much anger out there, it seems, against those people who got themselves in over their heads as there is against the aforementioned fat cats.

Anger, that’s the ticket. Everybody is very angry. Angry at Wall Street, of course. Who isn’t? Angry at banks and loan officers and those who took advantage of a system that recruited them as good credit risks when they weren’t. Angry at Bush. Angry at Paulson. Angry at Pelosi. Angry at Freddie and Fannie. Angry at the victims. Angry at the perps. 

They say anger can be cleansing. Maybe I should just relax and get with the program. In a couple of months, we can all wake up and see upon what beach this wave of ire has delivered us, and see how many innocent have been washed away with the guilty.