A Bonus of Contention to be Taxed at 90 Percent

The House reacted Thursday to corporate culture that continues to act as if this crisis never occurred by voting decisively to slap 90 percent tax on bonuses received by executives of companies bailed out by the taxpayer.AIG, which has been argued to have been a key catalyst of the crisis, defended itself before Congress the previous day for having since paid $165 million in executive bonuses. When that story broke it caused a political outcry and prompted an unprecedented 7,000 largely outraged comments from readers of The New York Times.

Taxpayers now own 80 percent of AIG, formally American International Group.

BS&T reported earlier this week on Eliot Spitzer, former Governor of New York having weighed in on AIG. He told WNYC radio in an interview Wednesday that it was a worse disgrace than A.I.G.'s payment of executive bonuses for AIG to have repaid banks whose losses on AIG were already being covered by government bailouts.