As for Sorkin’s point about retaining talent, haven’t these people already done enough damage? And aren’t financial professionals readily available right now? The argument seems less than sound to me. 

But here’s the real case for paying out the bonuses: They’re really not that much. We’re talking about a bonus pool that is like one fifth of one percent of all the money that the government had put into A.I.G. It’s like the value of C.C. Sabathia’s contract. In other words, as symbolic as these bonuses might be, they really don’t make much of a difference. Now, what is a bigger problem and worth fighting over is the fact that A.I.G. is paying out 100% of its obligations to the banks with whom it holds contracts. We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars flowing from taxpayers through the government, through A.I.G., and on to the banks without anyone, as the MBAs say, taking a haircut. Even shaving off one percent here would save far more than the total bonus pool that everyone’s raising a fuss over. Now, haircuts, my friends, are valuable enough to raise hell over.

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