I think it's a diversion. All of a sudden these million dollar bonuses are all over the news. Plenty of bailout recipients have given out bigger bonuses. AIG got $180 BILLION so far in bailout funds and the $165 MILLION they gave in bonuses is some huge deal? What happened to the other $179+ BILLION? It was spread out to other companies on Wall Street and around the globe, companies like Goldman Sachs, who gave compensation of over $70 million to some of their guys. That's not total, that's $70mil per guy. GS got their own direct bailout funds too.
Hank Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs guy, tried to push the bailout crap through as quickly as possible and included in his original proposal "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
The conspiracy theory stuff gets more believable every day. Looks to me like AIG is being used as a scapegoat.