If we had any doubts financial players intend to reinstall the same, corrupt crapshoot that tanked last summer, American International Group at least partially dispels them by continuing to reward its own high-rolling croupiers.

The company - a derivatives-soaked nightmare when it came begging for public rescue last year - is adding some spit of insult to the bargain by seeking a government benediction for this new bonus payout, amounting to almost $2.5 million. That's chickenfeed, of course, compared to previous bonuses. And it's not in the same league as the taxpayer-funded bailout package that saved AIG's bacon a few months ago - almost $144 billion.

Earlier this year, AIG paid more than $160 million in retention bonuses to employees of the unit that wrote those doomed derivative contracts. Many employees returned the money, but the episode sparked a national furor of executive pay that's still simmering.

Yep... that AIG. And all this gall from a flailing company that just may sport zero equity value.

And where, you may ask, in your low-ball naivete, is our newly appointed overseer of all things "executive perk"? Where is Kenneth Feinberg, filling a post created in the fallout of public outrage over the earlier AIG bonus orgy?

(The) compensation czar only has power over current and future compensation. AIG's upcoming payments involve bonuses delayed from 2008... Some Treasury Department officials believe they are under no obligation to offer an advisory opinion, which could leave AIG to make the decision on whether to pay the money on its own...

Yeah, it's a hot potato, alright. Don't want the peasants getting all riled over this greedy bullshit. Might come back to haunt even the comfortably detached in exclusive aeries, even a high-falutin' "compensation czar".

I feel, just from the temperature in my neighborhood and workplace, that Americans are reaching their saturation point. It's been obvious for some time that the same old rigmarole has been revived, re-invested and trotted out. Like GM pinning its hopes on a new muscle car to pump gas back in Chevy, we've got the same old game with the same old players back on Wall Street and in banking boardrooms. Only these days, they know tax money is always there to rescue them any time their brilliant financial strategies bust the tub. Like... now.

We have the gods of economics - like Robert Reich right here in these very pages - telling us what we already know, that a consumer economy like this one must depend on consumer spending to revive itself, but since our consumer society was suckered into becoming a debtor society by constantly flowing, relentlessly pushed tributaries of credit, consumers can't spend because there's no money to lend. The banks squandered it all buying up bad debt. It was an asset once... so long ago... Sept. 14, to be exact. Remember? 

This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years - featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere - simply cannot be sustained... The X marks a brand new track - a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows.

OK. Good, Robert. You're a well-meaning urban liberal. A bit coddled and out of touch, to be sure. But aren't all well-meaning urban liberals? We don't hate you... yet.

But we need ideas. Fast. Somehow, I'm not so sure these crucial brainstorms will come from level-headed, air-breathing nerfs like Robert Reich. They certainly won't come from me - I don't have a fresh idea for rescuing this mugged economy, but then, I don't have a six-figure income and a plaque telling the world I'm a god of economics, either. 

We need a new model, you say? OK. Now's the time to install it. Since we're scraping bottom, we might as well go all the way. Let's bite the bullet, throw away the system, and put in a new one.

We'll probably never have this chance again in my lifetime. If it's bad and getting worse, and our best and brightest constantly are telling us just that, let's go radical. Let's do it right.

But two things: No more of the old familiar moneychanger schemes, and creative "financial instruments" and nonregulation. Wall Street must take a hit. It can't be the same-old/same-old. And, sorry, Left. No Marx.

Whatever our new economic model is, it's gotta work.