Are you as disgusted as I am? There is no shame and it’s unlikely to change.

If you can grab it do so and screw everyone else, they don’t matter. Only you matter.

AIG received 170 billion in taxpayer money and they plan to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday.

According to Edward M. Liddy, the government-appointed chairman, “We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.”

The bonuses go to the “leaders” in the financial products division which is the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

AIG says that the bonuses are contractual.

In the brave new world of the Twenty-first Century ethics are defined by law and morality is old fashioned unless it’s about someone else.

As a wise man once said, “An ethical man knows he shouldn’t cheat on his wife. A moral man wouldn’t.”

If these executives are the “best and brightest” we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.

The contract doesn’t mean squat anyway since the recipients could turn the bonuses down just as a number of CEOs have recently.

Just think, if they did perhaps some of their colleagues wouldn’t be laid off.

And if you think this is an isolated incident of the “Thain mindset” take a look at the ad that Visa is running once again. I saw it once in Business Week last year and found it in terrible taste, but then it disappeared.

I thought the company had realized that their timing for a new status card was atrocious, but I guess I was wrong. This full-page ad appeared in the March 16, 2009 issue.

Perhaps the card is targeted at the recipients of that $165 million.

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Image credit: Visa