It’s bonus time again at AIG. America’s favorite charity, to which we gleefully contributed $180 billion, is set to hand out bonuses to 40 of their best go-getters. Unlike the gargantuan payouts of a few months ago, this is a paltry $2.4 million in bonus money.

It doesn’t seem like all that much, unless you consider that $2.4 million divided by just 40 employees means that these guys will be taking home a cool sixty grand a piece, on top of their regular salary. $60,000 is more than a lot of people make in a year. Let me take it one step further – $60,000 is more than a lot of hard working people who did NOT directly contribute to the collapse of the American economy make in a year.

What could these individuals have contributed that would justify such bonuses? These are deferred bonuses from 2008, meaning that these were ‘earned’ based on their performance as the company was falling billions of dollars into the red. Maybe these men and women are heroes in their own rights. Maybe AIG would have needed a $190 Billion or $200 Billion bailout if these bonus-worthy champions hadn’t done whatever it was that they did to prove themselves so valuable. But I don’t think so.

Continuing the proud tradition of making a bad thing worse by intervening in commerce, the federal government is now in the business of reviewing executive compensation. President Obama has appointed a Compensation Czar (no, I’m not making that up; that is a real position paid for by your tax dollars) to look into the salaries and bonuses earned by companies that are coming under the control of the United States government.

Of course, the Compensation Czar is powerless to do anything in this case because the bonuses were promised back in the carefree days before such a position even existed. The best we can hope for is another round of hand wringing and public vilification followed by complete and total inaction by the government. But the NEXT time a huge multination corporation fails and is bailed out by the government, just you watch.

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