A lesson in AIG bonus math

HOW MUCH is $165 million? It's the amount that AIG says they need to pay in bonuses to executives in their financial products division. Since the U.S. government has given AIG over $170 billion so far, and controls 80 percent of the company, we can safely say that the money being given to these loser execs is our money.

$165 million also turns out to be almost the exact amount of money that it would take to save all of the 2,000 permanent elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District who were just given pink slips (assuming an average salary and benefits cost of $80,000 per teacher).

So for the same amount of money that we gave to the people who helped to invent things like "credit default swaps" and "collateralized debt obligations" that threaten to pull down the entire U.S. economy, we could keep 2,000 more teachers in the elementary schools in Los Angeles.
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AIG says that it has to pay these bonuses because it is contractually obligated to do so. Funny how "contractually obligated" only seems to hold water when it applies to rich people.
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