Atlas Shrugging

Mark Steyn:

Resigned

This resignation letter from an AIG exec is worth reading:

I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down...

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press...

I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

I wonder if Senator Grassley (Republican, of course) is pleased that AIG honchos are now doing as instructed and falling on their swords. As I said a few days ago, if you own even modest assets (a small house, a savings account) and you think that in a battle between the political class and the business class it's in your interest for the latter to lose, you're a fool who entirely deserves the vaporization of his wealth on which Barney Frank & Co have embarked.

Likewise, watching a couple of dozen ACORN activists pretending to be indignant citizens leading a ton of news reporters willingly colluding in the fraud around suburban avenues in Connecticut, a talented executive would have to be completely desperate to offer his services to any entity bailed out by the government.

We have a president who shows no instinct for economic issues; a Treasury Department that, in a supposed crisis, is just one designated fall guy rattling around an all but empty building for whose senior positions no one has even been nominated; and thug legislators-for-life who bear far more direct responsibility for this mess posing as champions of da liddle guy in order to extend their already disastrous "oversight" ever deeper into the private sector. Things are going to get a lot worse.

But don't worry: If AIG throws their departing exec a leaving party, Congress will pass a bill deeming any such event a 97 percent taxable benefit.