Bonus Rage: Lame-o Lefties Lose Again

The bonus revolt is going to peter out. The Senate is going to let the bonus tax die--cooler heads have prevailed. In New York, the state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has persuaded nine of the top 10 bonus babies, all of them mightily rich, to give back the dough--meaning everybody will claim victory and shortly get on about their business.

For better or worse, mob anger, when coming from the left, is pretty lame. The economic world as we know it may be ending, but the left can't summon the kind of furies that got us into Iraq, declared war on terrorism, made the nation crazy about abortion, and gave gay marriage its buzzword name.

This is partly because the left's outrage is centered around economic issues. And economic issues are too complicated for bankers to understand, let alone earnest social studies teachers and anarcho college students. The fight against abortion has a lot more oomph and clarity than the fight against derivatives. What's more, the middle-class fist that needs to be raised in support of left-wing anger goes limp as soon as the stock market goes up. Five hundred points quells a lot of outrage. There's probably a formula: Liberals, being an optimistic bunch, need at least double the loss to undo half as much gain (or something like that).

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Comments

[Channel4NewsTeam]

10:24 AM on 03/25/2009

Perhaps people don't get angrier, because we'll get shot with rubber bullets, tazed, or gassed if we speak out too loudly. Queue the police state enablers in....5...­..4......3­...

[darker]

05:39 AM on 03/25/2009

So, Mike, since you kvetched, then WHAT IS YOUR SOLUTION?

Let's hear YOUR SOLUTION in excruciati­ng DETAIL.
We're fed up with the moaning going around and
want to hear practical SOLUTIONS.

[ceti]

01:37 AM on 03/25/2009

Wow, the guy doesn't realize he is skating on thin ice, while picking at the ice at the same time.

[wanked]

06:32 PM on 03/24/2009

There's alot of lefty rage to go around. However we stand united in our abhorrence to the military occupation­s currently being carried out by our govt. These bloodbaths cost the taxpayer about a BILLION dollars EVERY OTHER DAY. Kind of makes bonuses seem minor in comparison­.

[RRonin]

06:28 PM on 03/24/2009

Liberals don't "do" angry well. That's a conservati­ve thing. "Resentmen­t is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." - Malachy McCourt

[ditsylilg]

04:34 PM on 03/24/2009

No Michael, we showed outrage and coerced the bonus takers to give it back. It's called negotiatio­n, look it up.

[jhNY]

02:14 PM on 03/24/2009

But as the execs at AIG have mostly given back the f-in' money, it looks like what the lame-o lefties wanted, they mostly got , re bonuses. Or is there a larger, more subtly nuanced theme here that I'm missing amidst the gratutitou­s bashing of people who are mostly right about this issue, and economics generally? Please elucidate.

[Chubbster]

02:10 PM on 03/24/2009

AIG was a very well run insurance company that sprouted a hedgefund appendage that made greedy speculativ­e bets and lost trillions of dollars.

[magen]

02:10 PM on 03/24/2009

Mr Wolff-----­--

Why do you attribute the rage about the AIG bonuses only to the left??????­???

If there ever was something that EVERYBODY left or right could agree on---it was this outrage.

But you blame the left------­---this makes me question your motives...­......Hmmm­mmm.......­..

Also, 'splain exactly how we "lost". Most of the money is gonna be returned--­-how is that a "loss"????­?

[CantStopUsNow]

02:26 PM on 03/24/2009

Good point. What's Wolff up to? He writes a piece yesterday about the shrinking President, then CBS and Gallup come out with polls showing Obama's approval rating GROWING. I think Wolff's trying to get that big $$$$$ job with NewsCorp or something. Add some crocodile tears in between sentences, and your a shoe in Wolff.

[JSilasRed]

02:45 PM on 03/24/2009

Cause it's still in Gummint hands.

And MY taxes will go up to pay it off.

[Kojerk]

01:50 PM on 03/24/2009

It would help if the Lame-o Lefties as you've dubbed us owned the media. We don't. Our issues hardly ever receive the amount of attention they deserve. To say that the public wouldn't understand is really elitist. Besides, post-9/11, I have to confess, there is a very real possibilit­y that any form of civil disobedien­ce will brand you a "domestic terrorist" in a court of law. What the hell do you want us to do?

[Richter]

02:21 PM on 03/24/2009

Um, Kojerk, Wolff is being ironic here -- in fact, he's laying on the irony with a trowel.

[CantStopUsNow]

02:34 PM on 03/24/2009

He wants us to shut up because his argument that the Obama administra­tion is out of touch with the anger of the American people could be rendered moot if the truth is revealed that it is the media that is MOST DEFINITELY out of touch with how the AMerican people feel about the economy and about who should be held accountabl­e. "Why are you guys screaming and yelling on Wall Street? You should be on the White House lawn demanding the President be impeached. So that way we could have a lil' street cred, because we could explain all day how it's the President'­s fault. We cant explain why it's the fat cats fault though, cause we dont understand it either."

[research]

01:32 PM on 03/24/2009

AIG is the greatest fraud in human history, if you are not angry, you don't understand­.

Obama and FDR both more or less said:

You voted me in to do something, now Make me do it.

Populist Anger, short of rage, has created democracie­s around the world.

Control your anger, direct it to solving that which makes you angry.

Do not give in to rage and violence, it's wrong, and you will lose.

[JSilasRed]

02:46 PM on 03/24/2009

If we hadn't bailed em out, this would not be an issue.

[research]

02:58 PM on 03/24/2009

Failure was inevitable­.

Insurance without reserves.

Fraud.

Massive global fraud.

http://www­.huffingto­npost.com/­users/prof­ile/resear­ch?action=­profile

[Dredd]

01:10 PM on 03/24/2009

That is not a very deep understand­ing of what AIG is.

In fact it is quite shallow: http://blo­gdredd.blo­gspot.com/­2009/03/53­-of-aig-bo­nus-went-t­o-foreigne­rs.html

Why cover it up?