Not Thinking About AIG? Duh.

In an article about the AIG bonuses in the WaPo, we read:

For the new administration, the bonuses were a distraction from what senior aides called the main focus: getting the economy working and people back to work. "People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG," Axelrod said. "They are thinking about their own jobs."

I beg to differ. I was sitting around a restaurant table with church members the other day, and one bright older lady said, "I will never trust bankers again." And others reflected the same sentiment.

You cannot separate people's personal economic situations and their feelings about the bankers and other wealthy types who have brought a lot of this on all of us. It is of a piece, so to speak. Anyone with an IQ above 90 knows about the huge, unmerited compensations paid to CEOs and investment bankers over the last two decades, while everyone else has been just getting by or worse.

Yes, everyone wants the economic situation fixed, but there is a growing uproar outside the Washington Beltway and the island of Manhattan about the how the wealthy benefit whether the economy is doing well or not, while everyone else suffers, and the insidious corruption of democracy involved in that.

That is not going away, and the Obama administration had better stop being tone-deaf about it. Unlike many Bush supporters, who always gave him the benefit of the doubt and supported his policies no matter what, this Obama supporter does not believe in doing that. And I believe that there are many out there who feel the same way.