I take umbrage. Hugely.

Monday, 3:53 pm

By Kate

Oct

20

2008

We Americans seem to have a certain amount of affection and tolerance for the escapades of our rich and famous. They get away with a lot more than the rest of us could. I’m not sure how much this will change in the coming months—being ostentatiously extravagant while the rest of the country is crashing down the recession ladder might be like pouring salt in our wounds and it may not go over well. This could be particularly true for the Masters of the Universe who so blindly and blithely (and greedily) gambled their institutions and our economy into the toilet.

Somehow, we’ve been convinced (or told) that it’s utterly necessary for us to pony up the hundreds of billions of dollars to bail these [choose your own expletive] out of the mess of their own creation. You’d think that becoming the world’s largest welfare queens would have a slightly moderating effect on their arrogance.

Well, you’d think wrong.

While Paulson and Bernanke are forklifting massive loads of our cash into these institution’s vaults to recapitalize them so that they can carry on the world’s business, they apparently aren’t dialing back their party ways in recognition of their beholden-ness to us....their willing or unwilling saviors, as the case may be. I mean, let’s call it like it is.

No indeed. Despite having lost titanic amounts of money leading to their publicly financed bailout, these Masters of the Universe still think they are entitled to bonuses this year amounting to about 10% of the total freaking bailout. The thought evidently never crossed their minds that perhaps that bonus money, climbing into the tens of billions of dollars, might be better tucked into their coffers to help recapitalize their institutions. Perish the thought. They can still reward themselves for simply breathing because we’re here to pay for it. And there doesn’t seem to be a damned thing we can do about it. And they know it.

That’s the pinnacle of arrogance.

Humility and sacrifice are for the little people, dontcha know. For now, anyway.