Indeed. And I am not that incensed about the bonus altogether, since the bonuses are a drop in the bucket (Krugman talks about this), and really "bonus" in that industry really means "base salary". It's pretty crass that they're getting these bonuses, but hey, everyone else and their dog is overpaid in Manhattan too.
But the thing is, you can't look at this from the strictly rational point of view. Some journalist(s) has seized upon this as an illustration of what's wrong in the financial system, and has decided to run with it. It's fairly simple(istic): rich guys get fat bonuses at company they ran into the ground and that's benefiting from the largest government bailout in history, and now everyone in the media is running with this populist bit. The thing with these bonuses is that you don't need to understand scale to communicate the point. Everyone is losing money, and these guys are MAKING money. It's just pluses and minuses, which is close to a chunk of the general public's numeracy, or at leats how much people care about to know about this whole debacle. $170B, $1T, all these numbers have become abstract and lack reference, but pluses and minuses are still computable by everyone.
...
Actually, there's another view. It's simply that these bank employees, these executives, are the people who have driven the economy into the ground with their unbacked credit default swaps. "Burn them at the stake!" ...except that it's possible that they might be needed to unravel this mess anyway, just like the Bush administration should never have disbanded the Iraqi army and the Baath party. But right now, these are the bad guys, and there's no bloody way in hell they should be getting "bonuses".
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But the thing is, you can't look at this from the strictly rational point of view. Some journalist(s) has seized upon this as an illustration of what's wrong in the financial system, and has decided to run with it. It's fairly simple(istic): rich guys get fat bonuses at company they ran into the ground and that's benefiting from the largest government bailout in history, and now everyone in the media is running with this populist bit. The thing with these bonuses is that you don't need to understand scale to communicate the point. Everyone is losing money, and these guys are MAKING money. It's just pluses and minuses, which is close to a chunk of the general public's numeracy, or at leats how much people care about to know about this whole debacle. $170B, $1T, all these numbers have become abstract and lack reference, but pluses and minuses are still computable by everyone.
...
Actually, there's another view. It's simply that these bank employees, these executives, are the people who have driven the economy into the ground with their unbacked credit default swaps. "Burn them at the stake!" ...except that it's possible that they might be needed to unravel this mess anyway, just like the Bush administration should never have disbanded the Iraqi army and the Baath party. But right now, these are the bad guys, and there's no bloody way in hell they should be getting "bonuses".