Victims can be rich, too, I guess.

While some of you might not have too much sympathy for Jake DeSantis who resigned from AIG, I think that we should all feel sorry for ourselves that talent is definitely draining away from solving the complex, intricate problems we have before us.

On the one hand, I’m incensed that ex-Countrywide executives who caused the problems are able to participate in the solution for additional personal gain. But I also turned to my husband yesterday and said, “Why in the hell is Edward Liddy still working at AIG? Why doesn’t he just say ‘Screw it. YOU people try to solve this problem’ and walk away?” He’s got these idiot Congressmen judging him who can’t even figure out their own taxes. Does anyone realize that he was ASKED to take this job by Treasury Sec’y Paulson? “Six months ago, I came out of retirement to help my country,” Liddy said at yesterday’s House Financial Services subcommittee hearing in Washington. If we’re going to make a scapegoat of someone innocent, we should at least pick someone who was there when the crime occurred.

I have limited sympathy for this guy who wrote the AIG letter above, because I am *sure* in his career he was overpaid, and the money that he says he earned for AIG was enabled by a machine *he knew* was overpriced, overcomplicated, and under-financed. But, we should be careful when John Q Public thinks he knows how best to run these companies, lest we end up driving away people who really do. I certainly don’t want Senators with “wide stances” in charge of maximizing the value during the wind down of a complex financial derivative product company. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.