And all was right with the world

$50 Million in A.I.G. Bonuses Will Be Repaid

The New York State attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, said on Monday that he had persuaded nine of the top 10 bonus recipients at the American International Group to give the money back, as the Senate retreated on plans to tax such bonuses.

Mr. Cuomo said he was working his way down a list of A.I.G. employees, ranked by the size of their bonuses, and had already won commitments to pay back $50 million out of the total $165 million awarded this month. But in a reversal of the stand he took last week, he said he did not intend to release any names.
...
Mr. Cuomo said that he hoped eventually to recover $80 million in bonuses paid in March to A.I.G. employees in the United States. But he said an additional $85 million had gone to people outside the United States, and he did not believe his office had the legal standing to pursue them.

See these people aren't so bad. Sure they bankrupted the world, but when faced with the prospect of having their name revealed and having to face the triple stigma of working for AIG, working in the financial products division, and trying to pretend like they had done a good job, they buckled under to fear of peasants with pitchforks at their door what's right. It's amazing what massive barge loads of shame and scorn can do when dumped on the heads of social pariahs. Any chance of this working on our elected betters?

Cuomo didn't even need any fancy tax laws, which is good because none seemed forthcoming. The current "tax 'em all" plan had stalled, of course, in the Senate, where Senate Republicans asked for "more time to study the legislation". What's that? The guys that stopped bonus and wage legislation earlier aren't for taxing it either, even after spending almost an entire week pretending to care? Shocking.

Well in any event, almost all the money that can be recovered has been recovered and it seems the outrage of the day/week unfortunately came to an end without bloodshed. I'm sure something else will be along to make sure we don't pay attention to what's actually happening. Octomom being artificially inseminated with Charles Manson's seed while getting a bonus from Citibank or something. We'll all get really pissed.