Last fall, as AIG teetered on the edge of collapse, then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) came out against using government resources to rescue the firm. Less than 24 hours later, McCain decided that a bailout was necessary because, as he put it, "there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here." But today — after learning of the AIG's plans to award $165 million in bonuses to its employees — McCain apparently decided that saving "literally millions of people" from financial ruin wasn't worth it:
While McCain seems to believe that the only way to deal with AIG's misuse of its bailout funds is to not to offer such bailouts in the first place, other options exist. As Pat Garofalo explains, nationalizing AIG and giving the Treasury Department "outright control over the hiring and firing of executives and the payment of bonuses and dividends" would be a far more efficient strategy.
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