All that fine rhetoric about "people who take great risks for the sake of the economy deserve great rewards when those risks pay off", has been exposed for the sleazy lie that it is. It is the standard justification for the obscene fortunes that can be made under capitalism.

But what we see more and more often is that those who have great economic power can fix it so they win regardless of whether their plans fail or succeed. They have, in Robert's immortal phrase, "learned to game the system". These bonuses, and the golden parachutes executives arrange for each other, are the way capitalists evade risk for themselves and shift it on to the stockholders and the customer.

They do it because they can, they have the economic power to be able to frustrate market forces, and they have the motivation and justification that they belong to a CLASS (and yes, I'm applying that term with its Marxist usage) that feels they are entitled to do this simply because of who they are. They have mutual interests and they help each other out and cover for each other.

But those who should pay for this should be the stockholders, who took that risk when they invested in AIG without determining how AIG compensated the inept and incompetent in their ranks. That is a risk they took on when they tried for the supposed profits AIG could generate for them. If they don't accept the consequences of those risks, they will expect the government to bail them out in the future, too.

Unfortunately, these contracts are legal. In our democracy, the government doesn't get to decide the legality of pre-existing contracts, the courts do that. What the government does have the right to do is refuse to bail out AIG. Or to simply take it over on national security grounds, but only after AIG declares bankruptcy.