What a nonsense article coming from another opportunist. Paul Krugman can pretend that he's shocked but he isn't fooling any of us. He should give up his rich salary job and try doing the jobs we average joes and janes are stuck with. Obama can beg the Republicans to support him but I have more than had it with him.

The '"liberal" pundits at large defending him"' are on the corporate payroll. They're just another group of actors on the corporate controlled stage.

Is "Corporatocracy" so hard to swallow?

Your country(and possibly the rest of the world)
has been conquered.

Resistance is mandatory.

Krugman is a lost economist.....

Obama is a lost Lawyer.....

Both w/ the N. Prize...

Is the picture starting to come into focus?

Not that I am pleased if Obama really said he did
not disagree with the bonuses; I just want to say that
professional athletes also benefit from taxpayer
support because local governments often contribute
hugely to the construction of sports stadiums. So
his analogy isn't all that bad. And consider all the
special support and funding that athletes are provided
by public education in excess of other activities. So,
I would say that great athletes are coddled by the
taxpayers too.

"There's good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance..."

Well, obviously, people should be outraged not by the APPEARANCE, but by the REALITY. The (unconscious?) subtext here is that we should just get the *appearances* right, and everything will be just fine. Try as he might, PK cannot seem to get clear of the corruption he is attacking.

Still, it seems that PK is expressing genuine outrage, which is all to the good. But there's a jokiness to the tone that suggests that he realizes his outrage is pointless and ultimately comical. I wish he would devote his considerable abilities to examining the question of why it all seems so pointless...

Nice to see that Paul has finally chosen to fight on the correct side --- against both 'Vichy' parties of the Empire.

It's about time for Nobel economist, George Akerlof, to up-date his prescient 2001 comment that "in the Bush administration we do not have normal government economic policies, but rather a form of looting" --- to be expanded and generalized to, "In both these 'Vichy' parties fronting for the global corporate/financial/militarist Empire, what we have is a form of ruling-elite looting (by negative externalization) and intended extinction".

Paul, as Bogey said to Captain Renault when heading off together to fight the last global fascist Empire, "this could be the start of a great relationship"

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

Sorry, Paul, but Obama is full of clues. His forthright statements of admiration for banker bonuses will win him kudos where it counts - on Wall Street, who will re-elect him if they feel like it. And, by the way, they don't need to be worried about their Standard and Poor rating. Whoever's in the White House will authorize bailouts into th 22nd century if that what it takes to serve those who must be obeyed. Trumpeting "the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies" is what elected him and what will keep him there as long as his service is valued.

These guys drove their companies and the world economy to the brink of bankrupcy, which was only staved off by handing them the national piggybank........very "savvy"...

...about as "savvy" as Obama is as a national politician.

Obama is viewing the world through his own four cornered Axis of Evil. GIGO

It appears Mr. Obama is advocating what The Supreme Court has permitted in Law:

Greed and the Government have formed an unholy alliance. This alliance has near absolute power. The level of corruption will match the level of power. The recent Supreme Court Decision seeks to strengthen the alliance. Failure to condemn corruption or give it an aura of respectability makes you party to it. Savvy Businessmen work to create an environment of Trust to unleash creative energy. Trust is not a component of our financial system and Mr. Dimond et al helps to set that "tone at the top".

If Trust is not restored; corruption will unravel the fabric of this Country. That process is underway. The primary effect of corruption is the lowering of human potential. Mr. President, do you really intend that accomplishment?

Obama made his pact with the demon banksters, Main Street be damned, and he knows it full well. So we're no longer under his hypnotic ether. The question is: What will we do about it?

Thanks to such excellent and reliable news sources as Fox, the Washington Times and the Republican Party, most people seem to forget that the bailout die was cast even before Obama was sworn in.

What was he to do after he was sworn in? Proclaim it as a big mistake and shake the confidence of the nation even further?

On the other hand, he certainly should have called these bank executives on the carpet and humiliated them into foregoing their big bonuses at least until the crisis was over in the public eyes... or at least he might have suggested that the stockholders of these companies might want to replace their management teams and boards of directors in the near future.

When it comes right down to it, the stockholders of these banks and other corporations that pay their top people these outrageous amounts seem to be the ones who are brain dead... don't they realize that every dime that goes into these bonuses and ridiculous salaries is one less dime paid in dividends and interest to the stockholders?

This country was born in the fires of radical rebellion. it's time for a rebirth, stoke the flames!

What's PUMA for "I told you so"? :)

Hey , President Obama is the " undecider " one week he is blasting bonus's next week he is for it.
One year he is against the " war on terror" the next year he is for it.

One century American Christians love their neighbors and their enemy's, the next century the are taught to hate gays ,lesbians,liberals, Muslims , and all secular non believers, while funding gang stalking vigilante community watch torture on Americans.

Why should he be held to a different standard than all other self-righteous totalitarian fascists.

I will never forget the last 8 years of right wing Christian lunacy that ran this country in to the depths of hell.
All because God told Bushy to go to war with a group of criminals, / country's that harbor criminals.
Were are lucky we are not at war with every non Christian country in the world by that definition of a mission.

I am great full we had elections, not a fascist take over and martial law, I am great full that there is an well educated skillful politician as President.

I hope all of America has learned that we must always protect the constitution, specially from domestic enemy's, and we should always demand substance over the good old boy network for our President.

On election day in 2008 I sat at my computer and wrote a summary of my concerns about Barack Obama. They are the concerns of a retired psychologist, and of someone like author John Irving who looks for clues in father - son history. IMO the matter with Rev. Jeremiah Wright was misconstrued as a religious matter, rather than foolish deference to an alpha male. To the extent that Obama bought into the actual hype and patter of JW, he was an embarrassment to Occidental College, Columbia and Harvard. My eyebrows lifted with the information "I know these two men" and "I have met with each." Their darshan would have been way too much for him whereas an average homeless person could comfortably spit in both these men's faces or, say, President Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

WRT the topic of a Free Market, Barack is welcome to my definition. In a Free Market, a woman being raped has her knees stretched apart by bungee cords rather than by inflexible rope. "Free" is legally represented by those available 2.5 inches of squirming physical protest.

Beyond a certain threshold of executive remuneration, my recommendation has been to abandon the "dollar" and define a new monetary unit called a "galaxy". Short of using scientific notation, we might capture an approximate upper limit to ego and greed.

It is a revelation on Krugman's part and still---
It is an understatement.

It seems many of you posters are living in a dream world alright. You can't have tolerated and supported this financial system for decades and now expect a venal congress, myopic supreme court and a newly elected minority president to reverse that trend in a few months. Through inaction on numerous fronts you all have essentially blessed the notion that high finance is All-American and probably always will be. (The UK has been our partner in crime.) Obama gets no credit for giving up on leading the charge, but America makes an oil tanker look like child's play when it comes to doing a 180.

Oh, my God, Krugman just woke up!

When did baseball players ask for a bailout then get a huge bonus? They are paid for their talent, whether or not they reach the World Series (which every team but two can't do).

Does he want every profession to make the same amount of money? What is that called?

Krugman's last line is correct: we ARE doomed!

The whole media production involving bonuses and CEO's relationship to the financial crisis represents nothing more than the ruling class sacrificing their second or third defense ring to protect the core. Armies do this all the time and, of course, in the class war, it is no different.

The crisis exists because of the changes in the structure of the economy over the past three decades. Low wages, debt, outsourcing, low taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and the resulting transfer of tens of trillions from the bottom and the middle to the top.

The ruling class, the finance capitalists, hire the CEOs to manage the plunder. Of course, they take their share of the booty, but it is a small part of the actual theft. They are pawns.

How do we know this is true? Simply, because the press is full of talk of "bonuses" and "CEOs". Do you really think that the press, whose sole purpose is to deceive, would be spreading the truth so far and wide that every ignoramus in every obscure corner of the realm would be blaming the crisis on "bonuses" and "crooked CEOs"?

You will notice that you will never find any attacks on corporate power in the press. Corporations are the first or second line of defense, depending on how you want to define it, protecting the core interests of finance capital. They are the queens, knights, bishops, and rooks protecting the king.