The anger stirred up by Congress and by the press over the AIG bonuses resulted in an unconstitutional law being passed in the House of Representatives and ACORN bussing people to homes of AIG executives in Connecticut to protest the fact that these people were successful.  What did it accomplish?  Is envy better than greed?

The New York Times has the resignation letter of resignation from Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

Follow the link and read the letter for yourself.  The bottom line is–this man was asked to work for $1 a year salary to help ‘fix’ the company’s financial problems with a promise of a large bonus at the end of that time.  The company assured him and the other people working twelve to fourteen hour days on this project (for $1 a year) that they would receive their bonuses at the end of that time.  The anger that was drummed up against them, resulting in their having to return their bonuses or face a 90 percent taxation rate is ignorant envy.  The government has not right to decide which employment contracts are valid and which are not.  If they wanted these contracts voided, AIG should have gone into Chapter 11, where a judge would have made these decisions based on bankruptcy law–not on the ‘villain of the moment.’  Before we start blaming people because they make more money than we think they should, we need to think about where that leads.  The less government intrusion into what people earn, the more successful we will be as a country.