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If you have a computer, television or radio, by now you&#39;ve heard: the company you own a stake in whether you like it or not recently paid&amp;nbsp;some of its former and still-employed employees $165 million in bonuses. Yes, AIG&amp;#8212;that three-letter acronym of a company that&amp;#8217;s come to represent bad calls, bailouts and bonehead moves like giving its staff bonuses with government money&amp;#8212;has done it again, spitting in the face of the hand not only feeding it but holding the plug to the IV it&amp;#8217;s been sucking on for months. &lt;p&gt;And why, you ask, did AIG pay its employees all these millions? &lt;p&gt;Because there were signed contracts that stated it could. &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s true. And indeed, it&amp;#8217;s a terrible reason to go ahead with the bonuses from many perspectives, including a PR one (in the past 48 hours, AIG offices have been bombarded with angry emails and phone calls) and, according to Republican Senator Charles Grassley from the Tall Corn State, a moral one. &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, the conservative Iowa senator recommended that a few AIG executives either step up and admit they made some extremely poor decisions, or else commit hari-kari. Today, the senator (sort of) retracted his statement that execs should take the honorable Samurai way out, but he&amp;#8217;s still darn angry that there&amp;#8217;s been no public apology, and believes that handing out bonuses&amp;#8212;while folks in Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and 47 other states flip through want ads&amp;#8212;is an abomination. &lt;p&gt;The latest AIG blunder has also inflamed&amp;nbsp;the Obama administration and New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (who&amp;#8217;s always up for a bonus fight; Andy&amp;#8217;s already got Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch in his sights, and he&amp;#8217;s locked and loaded). Both government parties are not going to make it easy for AIG to pay their employees going forward, especially since it appears that they won&amp;#8217;t be able to legally reverse the latest round of bonus payments. They&amp;#8217;re further ticked off because of how it makes them look to the American public&amp;#8212;that is, not good. &lt;p&gt;Given that this piece of news is being so highly publicized, government officials will be forced to increase their clamping down on any firm it&amp;#8217;s given even a penny to, and will police everything from bonuses and salaries to free bagels and Putt-Putt outings. Now more than ever, public representatives need to, at the very least, give the impression to the American people, aka AIG shareholders, that it won&amp;#8217;t stand for these types of unethical acts by companies that they appear to keep bailing out. &lt;p&gt;And the implications will reach across the country, from AIG&amp;#8217;s New York headquarters through the heartland and home of Grassley&amp;#8217;s constituents all the way to the Pacific, affecting all sectors of the notoriously high-paying scandal-ridden-as-of-late financial services industry. This means you&amp;#8212;if you&amp;#8217;re employed by one of the big or small firms that have accepted fund under TARP&amp;#8212;will feel the pinch of Uncle Sam&amp;#8217;s grip sometime soon, and you have about&amp;nbsp;418 employees over at the U.S.-owned (if not operated) American International Group to thank.&lt;/p&gt;

Derek Loosvelt

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