Your post implies that all AIG bonus recipients (and others covered by H.R. 1586) were culpable in the company's financial implosion. I've not seen any facts supporting this, and in his now-famous op-ed in the NYT, Jake DeSantis asserts otherwise. Oftentimes a company pays retention bonuses to keep its "best" people to clean up the mess made by others. This is an important question independent of economic, financial, constitutional, and ethical questions. It is extraordinarily counterproductive to direct populist anger at those who agreed to stay on to, in effect, save the taxpayers money. Like DeSantis, they may simply quit and leave less talented people behind (probably at the Treasury Department) to figure it out.

I have four blog posts on the AIG bonus issue, and its incentive effects, at http://neutralsource.org. I address the purposes served by bonuses and the statutory reason they are tax-favored; the text of H.R. 1586, and its implications; the awful tax implications of returning bonuses; and the incentive effects H.R. 1586 may have on the Treasury Department's new public-private investment partnership. In particular, H.R. 1586 signals to prospective investors that if they make "too much" money -- a term to be defined after the fact -- Congress may expropriate it.