March 22, 2009

No Respect for Numbers

I have to admit, I was fooled by the coverage as well. The intertwining of millions and billions was done so deftly that I actually bought the lie that these bonuses were eating up the lion's share of the bailout money. But not even close. Now, it didn't matter - contractual obligations are what they are, and that's the bottom line - not to mention that the Dems **drafted** and **pushed** and **signed** the legislation agreeing to leave them alone (in fact it's named after that Dodd character) so I wasn't going to scream about it anyway. But when I realized that I, of all people, had been bamboozled by the "million/billion" shit? I was pissed. Now let's get a little grip on what a trillion dollars REALLY IS, shall we?

There is one million dollars in $100 bills. Now it would be preferable to have this in dollar bills, because frankly, we're trying to get a handle on what a trillion DOLLARS is, not what 1/100 of a trillion dollars is. But I'll go with it, since I don't know how to do the drawings.

There is 100 million dollars, in $100 bills, Benjamins, on a standard pallet. Sweet. AIG bonuses were 1 1/2 of the above.

One. billllion. dollars. The money AIG received was 175 times that amount. Not that I'm in favor of bailouts, but have some fucking perspective - those bonuses don't mean jack shit in the broad scheme of things.

One TRILLION dollars. Nearly the base rate of the "stimulus" package, while the left tries to distract us with the bonus bullshit. Notice they are double stacked AND the image had to be rescaled.

If you want to be pissed about something, be pissed that we're being taxed now at the mammoth rate of the last picture (just to start with - we're not counting the budget or any of the other abortions we're being asked to swallow) and stop bitching about contractual bonuses that were written into the bill in the first place and that all the people that are angry now that supported it when they wrote and passed it. Obama Received a $101332 Bonus from AIG. He's also the second largest recipient of Freddie/Fannie largesse, and no one's talking about their bonuses, eh? These guys are in bed with these businesses and then stir up faux outrage to pull the wool over our eyes so we won't notice they're stealing thousands of times the amount from all of us. Nice going, way to buy into the bullshit, folks.

Your moment of zen:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And this just goes to show you that the rovernment, knowing NOTHING about how to fun a business, should stay the fuck out of business. If there had been no bailout, AIG would've claimed bankruptcy which would've made all contracts null and void and the execs wouldn't have gotten their fucking bonuses. Case closed. But, no, the assholes in government, who think they know EVERYTHING, had to stick their ignorant noses into the mess and now the public has to pay for it and it will drag on for fucking years. Thanks for nothing, bozos!

Anonymous said...

My ass hurts now. Can I get some lube please?