Hollow Outrage

This article about the AIG bonuses in today's NYT shows that Treasury is simply not doing its job, and that Obama is out of the loop on this stuff. His outrage yesterday rings hollow to me, I'm sorry. He simply has to get out in front on this stuff, or he is going to lose support.

The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall. The program has provoked public protests from a handful of critics and at least one Democratic lawmaker in Congress — Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, a member of the House Committee on Government Oversight, who demanded without success in December that A.I.G. provide information about the bonuses.

Mr. Cummings said he had been communicating regularly with A.I.G.’s chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, about the bonuses ever since December. Mr. Cummings said he was particularly concerned that the bonuses were supposed to be paid by March 15, adding that he assumed Treasury officials had the same worries.

“I assumed that they were well aware of it and would take appropriate action” before the March 15 deadline, Mr. Cummings said. “In light of the biggest quarterly loss in history, you would think that A.I.G. and Mr. Liddy would have been able to convince folks who were supposed to be getting these retention payments, based at least in part on performance, that they might want to voluntarily not take all or part of them.”