If you are an American with any mental capacity at all, there is one company on your mind tonight, AIG, American Insurance Group. No matter if you are a farmer in Kansas, or a teacher in California, old, young, Republican, Democrat, rich, poor or in between, three simple letter raise your hackles, AIG. For those of you Brits who don't know, AIG is the company that has taken the most out of the bailout the US taxpayers have been saddled with, billions of dollars to this one company. The revelation they will be paying millions of dollars in bonuses to top brass is perhaps a smoke screen according to many news organizations to cover up the fact billions of taxpayer funds have left our country for places like Germany, courtesy of the folks at AIG.
Judging from the TV talk shows tonight, news, and public blogs and forums, Obama should have perhaps asked Gordon Brown to bring him a nice pair of Dunlop wellies like I bought in Scotland, because the golden child has been stepping in it right and left lately. Right now, Democrats are just as mad as Republicans over the AIG debacle, and since Obama today claimed that the buck stopped with him, in order to shield his tax dodging Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner from the public wrath over this matter, Obama may soon wish he was still a community organizer in Chicago, fighting the system rather than being a part of it. It didn't help this week that Obama's plan to make injured war veterans pay for their own medical care surfaced, I think another week like this and our "hope and change" President may see his approval ratings racing downward to meet those of George W. Bush.
The mood over here just doesn't get any better, and more and more people are beginning to realize it really doesn't matter what party a given politician belongs to, it is pretty much a certainty if they aren't a crook, they are probably incompetent. The bright side is, we now have a central conversation theme that is not related to the weather. No matter where you go you can strike up a conversation simply by saying, "so, what do you think of this AIG thing??".