Probably not a popular sentiment.  And if it is the derivitive traders getting bonuses, I would get angry too.  But this is a huge, probably too big corporation with multiple revenue streams.  So the derivitive guys lost big, I am just saying that other depatments that made money should not fall under the same derision.  Maybe a guy doing a good job trading in currency futures made what would have been a 10 billion loss into a 9 billion loss.  Shouldnt he be compensated.  And what about all the day to day claims and underwriters who have nothing to do with CDS, should they be penalized along with the risk takers in the swap department?  This is a big company, and while it is in bad shape due to it's own poor risk management, not every department should suffer for the faults of a few. Top tier leadership, sure lets grill them over bonus money, but for rewarding the sectors in a floundering business that mitigate losses, or at least make losses in the range of "my god this is the end of the world" into losses in the range of " wow, that was really bad" suffer along with everyone else is foolish.  We should demand a little justification of the bonus money, but it should not be outright banned, because some hard working exec in that company might have found a way to make AIG ask for 25 billion next month instead of 28 billion.

By the way, for all the faithful out there, lets hope there is not any big disasters this year.  I got a feeling that if an F4 hurricane makes landfall, you will see a bunch of insurers go under.