Last Straw

RNN inter­view with Noam Chom­sky, who quickly gets to the nub of things as usual, e.g.:

… for example, take … the AIG bonuses that are … caus­ing such anger, right­fully. Dean Baker poin­ted out that there’s an easy way to deal with it. Since the gov­ern­ment pretty much owns AIG any­way (it just doesn’t use its power to make decisions), split off the sec­tion of AIG — the fin­an­cial invest­ment sec­tion that caused all the prob­lems — split it off, and let it go bank­rupt. And then the exec­ut­ives can seek to get their bonuses from a bank­rupt firm if they like … And with the banks, the big banks, like Bank of Amer­ica, one of the big prob­lems is nobody knows what’s going on inside. They’re are very opaque devices … they’re not going to tell you them­selves … But the gov­ern­ment could find out — namely … take over the banks.