We cannot attract and retain the best and the
brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses…
if employees believe their compensation is subject to
continued and arbitrary adjustment.
–AIG chair Edward M. Liddy,
defending the payment of $165 million in bonuses
to employees of a firm that has required
$170 billion in government bailout funds

Yes, billions they lost in one quarter.
This bothers them not in the slightest.
They still want a bonus for failure,
For they are the best and the brightest.

You’d think, with the damage they’d done, they’d
Apologize, at their politest.
But they want a bonus for failure,
For they are the best and the brightest.

No bonus? Well, then they might leave, though
The job market’s shrunk to its tightest,
And Burger King now is competing
To hire the best and the brightest.