Looks like the world’s largest retailer is getting serious about green.

From The Register:

The five latest stores in Walmart’s pilot program, which now totals 20 stores, Sam’s Clubs, and distribution centers in Hawaii and California, will all be located in sunny Puerto Rico. Their solar installations will be provided by SunEdison, described by Walmart as being “North America’s largest solar energy services provider.”

Walmart, however, won’t be buying the solar systems from SunEdison. Instead, that panel punter will finance, own, build, and operate them itself, and sell the generated juice to Walmart. The systems will provide the stores with 25 to 35 per cent of their electrical needs, and are projected to produce 90 million kWh of power over the 15-year life of the project.

Walmart is dead serious about solar power, stating in their most recent Solar Power Fact Sheet that “our goal [is] 100 percent renewable energy.”

Obviously this is encouraging because, if it works and Wal-Mart can create a compelling enough business case, it’ll force other retailers to follow suit.

More as it develops…

CNN explains why this issue has reignited…

Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) was roundly panned amid speculation that it was considering paying its employees some of the largest bonuses on record, despite having accepted $10 billion from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, last fall. (The investment bank has paid the government back, however.)

Earlier this month, outrage over bonuses paid out by bailed-out insurer AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) bubbled back to the surface after The Washington Post reported that AIG was seeking the government’s consent to make a scheduled performance bonus payment of $2.4 million to 43 of its top-ranking executives.

So is this some sort of plot against capitalism?

Hardly.

In fact, a lot of companies have already adopted similar policies of their own accord…

Twenty three companies have agreed to give shareholders an annual vote on executive compensation, including Aflac (AFL, Fortune 500) and Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), according to the advisory firm RiskMetrics. And more than 80 others agreed to take the issue under consideration at their annual shareholder meetings this year.

Long story short, this is just good corporate governance, and sometimes legislation needs to force certain people’s hands. Unfortunate, but that’s how it goes.

We’ve been hearing about cellulosic ethanol for several years now, generally with the caveat that were at least a few years, and a few scientific breakthroughs, away from it coming to market and helping wean us from foreign oil. Unlike corn, which breaks down into the sugars necessary to be processed into ethanol relatively easily, cellulose is a hardy material that takes time and energy to break down. Its upside is that there happens to be more cellulose present than any other organic molecule on the planet. This is why millions upon millions of dollars has been poured into cellulosic ethanol research, genetically modifying naturally occurring enzymes to break it down faster and looking for ways to bring the price per gallon down closer to the price of gasoline.

Unlike corn, which takes land out of food production, is inefficient as far as how much energy it takes to produce and is a high maintenance crop, finding raw material for a cellulosic plant is easy. Wood chips from sawmills, the kudzu scourge spreading through the hot and humid Southeast, agricultural waste and even up to 80 percent of what ends up in our landfills could be used to make cellulosic ethanol.  Thankfully, the millions of dollars in research and development have begun to bear fruit.

A gas station near Ottawa is the first in the world to begin selling a cellulosic blend, called CE-10, to the public. Iogen, the company behind the demonstration plant that produced the fuel, plans to build its first full scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Saskatchewan. It has reached an agreement with the local government and Royal Dutch Shell to convert an old Mill site to their purposes, with the government even agreeing to purchase any green energy produced at the site. The running demonstration plant only has the capacity to produce about 3 million liters of ethanol each year, using wheat straw agricultural waste, while the new plant will be able to pump out about 75 million liters. It will make use of a more diverse feed stock, including agricultural waste from other crops, grasses native to nearby areas and even wood chips from area mills.

The march of progress continues, with a number of large companies making big investments into these technologies. Last year GM purchased a large share of Coskata, a big player in the emerging cellulosic ethanol industry, who claims to have developed a process that simplefies the complex and costly process of breaking down cellulose and brings the cost of production down to being competitive with gasoline. There are as many as two dozen companies with plans to build plants similar to Iogen’s, but the economic downturn is effecting their ability to finance these projects. Coskata is hoping to get some stimulus money, in the form of loan guarantees, to help finance its plant, with an estimated production of 50-100 million gallons a year.

As President Obama often says, if we intend to be a leader in the green energy industry of tomorrow, we need to move boldly in that direction today. Now is not the time to let companies who wish to lead us in there falter because of financing problems. Some are talking about a new stimulus bill, which most people reasonably see as a terrible idea, that would focus on these kinds of projects and job creation. The first should have done so, and I have little confidence that a new one would make it through congress without being similarly unfocused and pork laden.

We don’t get too many of these chances, where we can kill three birds with one stone. Job creation, independence from foreign oil and environmental progress can all be had with some smart funding priorities. Lets hope the administration recognizes this in time.

Most people don’t realize that the insane gas prices last year had nothing to do with increased demand and had everything to do with market speculation and hoarding encouraged by the top investment banks.

Now True/Slant’s own Matt Taibbi uncovers the truth behind the scam.

Read the rest at True/Slant.

When the world’s largest retailer backs something like this, it’s hard to ignore. Especially since they’ve had such a spotty record when it came to covering their 2 million employees in the past.

From The Hill:

With Wal-Mart’s endorsement of a legal requirement that employers provide health benefits to their workers, the nation’s largest employer has broken from the business community. [...]

Moreover, Wal-Mart declared its support for the employer mandate in a joint letter to Obama with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the liberal Center for American Progress, which is run by John Podesta, a close associate of the White House.

“We are entering a critical time during which all of us who will be asked to pay for health care reform will have to make a choice on whether to support the legislation,” says the letter, signed by Wal-Mart President and CEO Mike Duke, SEIU President Andy Stern and Podesta. “This choice will require employers to consider the trade off of agreeing to a coverage mandate and additional taxes versus the promise of reduced health care cost increases.”

Now, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is diametrically opposed to the mandate and actually attacked Wal-Mart as a result of this move…

“Some businesses make the decision to use the government as a weapon against their competition,” James Gelfand, the Chamber’s senior manager for health policy, said in a statement. “We do not agree with this method — the government is a blunt instrument and taxes have extreme unintended consequences, negatively affecting the economy as a whole. We also recognize that momentum is moving against an employer mandate. The business community will be stepping up our advocacy as necessary, too.”

First off, “weapon?” Really? Good lord…

Also, note the phrase, “taxes have extreme unintended consequences, negatively affecting the economy as a whole.”

I’m all for robust debate, but making such dire, blanket statements like that will not help the Chamber’s credibility with anybody but the die-hard conservatives/libertarians that think taxation is some evil plot to rob them of their freedoms.

In other words, they better strike a different tone or they may find their voice ignored in the coming months as businesses follow the lead of the most successful retailer in history.

Not too many people are dancing over the news of GM’s bankruptcy, but opinions are decidedly mixed on what the government ownership of the car company will mean.

Lee Cary, of American Thinker sees the era of Government Motors dawning with coercive attempts to force a Green fleet onto American consumers. This, in Cary’s opinion, will be quickly followed by the unintended consequences, namely a falling market share followed by more government infusions of money, followed by tariffs on foreign automobiles, followed by retaliatory tariffs on American-made goods, followed by economic disaster.

How about Robert Reich, who has routinely applauded the Obama economic agenda? Well, he’s not exactly sunny either. Reich says the government part-ownership of GM will do nothing more than slow its inevitable demise. He accuses the administration of trying to have it both ways by appeasing autoworkers (who want as much bailout as possible) and average taxpayers (who generally oppose the government’s intervention).

So the Obama administration is, in effect, paying $60bn to buy off both constituencies. It is telling the first group that jobs and communities dependent on GM will be better preserved because of the bail-out, and the second that taxpayers and creditors will be rewarded by it. But it is not telling anyone the complete truth: GM will disappear, eventually. The bail-out is designed to give the economy time to reduce the social costs of the blow.

Certainly someone must think things could turn out just fine. Oh sure. There’s Michael Moore. He sees this as a great opportunity for the government to seize American industry in the name of fighting a war against global warming and dwindling oil supplies. He wants massive mass transit, he wants it now and he wants it built in GM factories by GM workers who would, of course, be government workers in Moore’s world.

Feel free to leave your own predictions/desires in the comments. As for me, I’m going to take some more antacid in the hopes of quieting a stomach turning circles over the prospect of a government-owned car company.

All the kings horses and all the bond deals couldn’t keep GM from cracking. As feared, the car giant has filed for bankruptcy. Now what?

The plan is for the federal government to take a 60 percent ownership stake in the new GM. The Canadian government would take a 12.5 percent stake, with the United Auto Workers getting a 17.5 percent stake and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing GM shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

Plus, GM could get an additional $30 billion in federal assistance for its reorganization. That’s on top of the $20 billion the company already received in the form of low-interest loans.

More fallout: the Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands will be terminated or sold. And GM will no longer be listed as part of the Dow Jones industrial average.

Oh, and the majority owner of one of America’s most storied companies will now be the U.S. government – at least for awhile.

Good times. More soon.

In a bid to survive bankruptcy, Chrsyler is closing nearly 800 dealerships, a full quarter of the company’s dealers. The dealers themselves had no say.

While bankruptcy may be a better long-term solution for Chrysler than continued government bailouts, the short-term will not be pretty. Car dealerships provide a lot of jobs and a lot of tax revenue for communities. They also tend to sponsor charity events and spend a lot on advertising, particularly in local newspapers which, as we all know, aren’t doing so well these days.

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) has already launched a campaign calling on President Obama to act now to stop the Chrysler closings and the ones expected to affect over 1,000 GM dealers in the next few weeks and months. One of NADA’s talking points is that dealers, on average, pump $16.5 million per year into their communities. The lost revenue will be felt deeply in a lot of places.

But just because something is painful doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary. No one wants to see this kind of turmoil in what was once one of America’s proudest companies, but Chrysler simply can’t hope to continue without making cuts. Better to remove a quarter of their dealers now than to have to shutter them all in a year or two. That’s the raw and unfortunate calculus. But I’m sure that’s cold comfort to those who will lose their jobs.

President Obama will announce Monday that he has secured the commitment of several industry groups to do their part to rein in the growth in health care costs.

This pledge from the private sector could reduce the growth in health care spending by 1.5 percentage points a year, for a savings of $2 trillion over 10 years, a letter from the groups will promise, according to a senior administration official. Overall, it could amount to a 20% reduction in the growth of health care spending.

Six trade associations representing unions, hospitals, insurers and the drug industry have signed on to the commitment.

Without judging the specifics of this, cost containment is an essential step in any health care reform. Some observers seem to think, if the government just footed the bill, everything would be fine. But if costs are a burden now (or are rising at an unsustainable rate), then they’ll continue to be a burden no matter who signs the checks.

Real reform isn’t about choosing between government or private health care. Reform is about finding a way to make care for everyone economically feasible. All solutions need to be on the table – not just the ones which conform to a specific ideology.

The question is: how do we contain costs without lessoning quality of care? The industry seems to think there are ways to do this, mainly through increased efficiencies. There’s also talk of reforming how providers are paid – making such payments results based rather than per-service-rendered based. But how you judge “results” with any speed or equity is a mystery to me.

In any case, I’m glad to see the issue of cost being addressed early in this process. That is the central dilemma.

Despite all the government assistance and talk of providing more, GM lost $6 billion last quarter with earnings dropping by 47%.

GM executives say car buyers are turning away from GM out of concern the company will end up in bankruptcy and won’t honor its warranties. Could the prospect of bankruptcy help force bankruptcy? To put it dramatically, is GM in a death spiral?

The company has until June to provide the government a restructuring plan. But another quarter like this past one is going to make Americans extremely wary of handing out yet another bailout.

President Obama’s plan to crack down on what he considers to be overseas tax shelters is already creating a lot of backlash from the business community. The main complain? Taxing overseas profits will directly harm American jobs.

[Martin Regalia, chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce] said the ability of companies under current tax law to defer tax payments on overseas profits — a provision Obama wants to undo — was enacted intentionally so U.S. companies could avoid double taxation by the United States and the foreign countries in which they do business.

“The deferral was instituted as a way to address or remove some of the imbalances between the U.S. tax system and our foreign competitors’ territorial tax system,” Regalia said. “This was put in knowingly. It wasn’t sneaked in. It wasn’t a loophole. So if you take it away or reduce its value, you’re going to reinstitute the competitive imbalance between U.S. multinationals and their foreign competitors.”

And, the argument goes, if American companies can’t compete overseas they will shrink in size and end up laying off Americans.

What Obama wants to combat is the outsourcing of jobs overseas. By forcing American corporations to pay taxes on the profits they make from, say, a call center, the president hopes companies will think twice before moving those jobs out of the U.S. Also, he’s looking for a way to raise more revenue for his endless list of plans and apparently thinks he can get this through Congress.

Of course, the problem is, the market tends to get what the market wants. If American companies can’t afford to fill a market segment (either at home or abroad), a foreign company could quickly fill the void. As such, the business community has a very reasonable complaint here and I expect a fair number of conservative Democrats will think twice before upsetting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We’ll see.

This certainly turns the tables on the notion that unions are somehow “anti-business.”

From USA Today:

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. — The United Auto Workers union will own 55% of a restructured Chrysler LLC and its retiree health care trust will get a seat on the board if union members vote to approve contract concessions this week.

Chrysler stock could even be traded publicly again, as there are mechanisms for the UAW to sell shares to fund the health care trust.

Factory-level union leaders voted unanimously Monday night to recommend approval of concessions that union President Ron Gettelfinger said would help keep the automaker out of bankruptcy.

A summary of the revised Chrysler-UAW contract says that Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA eventually will own 35% of a restructured Chrysler, with the remaining 10% stake divided between the U.S. government and secured lenders, mostly banks and hedge funds.

Up is down, black is white, dogs and cats living together…

Honestly, I think this could actually turn out rather well because the union obviously has increased interest in making sure the business stays afloat and is profitable.

We shall see…

On Thursday, President Obama announced support for a new bill aimed at protecting credit card holders.

As early as next week, House Democrats expect to act on a bill that would make it harder for the industry to slap new fees and rates on cardholders while also requiring clearer disclosure of the costs and risks for cardholders. The bill would codify and expedite rules already proposed by the Federal Reserve Board, rules that would not be implemented until 2010.

Legislation pending in the Senate would go further, barring lenders from imposing interest rate increases on existing balances.

As usual with these things, the specifics will be hashed out in Congress. But the credit card companies are already warning that new restrictions will inhibit their ability to provide credit in these tough times. And Republicans are calling Obama a hypocrite for going after credit card companies when his own policies are unfairly heaping debt onto the American public.

I do not doubt that some credit card companies knowingly participate in ethically questionable business practices. But, in my mind, the central problem isn’t that new fees are created without warning or that finance charges are applied without explanation, but that too many of these companies actively exploit consumers by handing out credit to those without the means of paying off debts and by creating too-good-to-be-true offers which are designed to fool consumers into making bad decisions. Even for savvy credit card holders with good habits, picking through the small print on a new offer can be a frustrating and confusing undertaking. It’s no surprise some people end up with massive bills, choked with unaffordable finance charges.

I’m not sure what the appropriate government solution to these problems would be. Transparency in credit card offers would be a good start. No more advertising 0% finance charges for 18 months while hiding the fact that being late on one payment by one day will cause you to lose the deal and end up with 20-something percent in finance charges.

After that, I’d support some form of initiative that holds credit card companies partially liable for extending credit to consumers who clearly lack the means to pay off debts. That’s a subjective matter, so the issue would probably need to be handled through bankruptcy court. But creating some form of shared liability would help prevent cases of blatant exploitation.

Obviously, credit card companies need the freedom to earn profits and wastrel consumers shouldn’t be protected from their mistakes. But I do believe there is an unhealthy imbalance between credit card companies and their consumers. As always, I fear Congress will overreach and/or focus on the wrong aspects of the problem, but I’m not upset that the matter is being considered.

Fox is attempting to position the show, called “Someone’s Gotta Go,” as less about reveling in other people’s misfortune and more about promoting employee empowerment. You see, the companies will disclose all employee’s salaries, thus allowing colleagues to make sure a deserving person isn’t terminated.

While I am a strong supporter of salary transparency in the workplace, that’s hardly the point behind the show. Fox is just trying to turn a very real and difficult problem into entertainment. What’s next? A reality program where transplant patients vote on who should get stuck at the end of the transplant list? Maybe we can set up some cameras outside a shelter and get homeless people to vote on which of them has to sleep outside once the shelter is full?

As to why any self-respecting small business owner would agree to be a part of Fox’s show, maybe the network is paying the businesses significant money (Fox hasn’t released details on any payments). Or maybe the business owners hope the exposure on national television will help elevate sales. If companies are in bad enough shape, I can see why they’d be willing to try anything.

But I’m not sure what Fox’s motivation is. The show makes the network look callous and, without being an expert in television programming, I’m hard pressed to identify what the intended audience is for a show that reminds viewers we’re in a recession and times are pretty crappy.

All said, it’s not that big of a deal. But I thought it worth a mention. I’m sure the marketplace will quickly determine whether or not Fox has made a mistake with this show.

This is Danielle Ivory, reporting from the American News Project and Alternet.

Back in February, in the House Financial Service Committee, when asked a question about the value of Citigroup’s assets, CEO Vikram Pandit provided a less-than-clear response: “It’s an extraordinarily difficult question.”

Click the video below to WATCH the exchange between Rep. Louis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Vikram Pandit.

Rob Weissman, director of the corporate watchdog group, Essential Action, and author of a new report called Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America, said that, in addition to what Pandit said, there’s an additional factor that could fog the test results: off-the-book assets.

“If you don’t include the off-balance sheet assets in the stress test, then it’s not a legitimate stress test,” Weissman said. “It’s pretty plain that the off-balance-sheet operations are a central part of the story of why we don’t know what the banks own.” The Treasury Department declined to comment on whether they would take off-book-assets into account when running the stress tests.

Weissman says that recipients of bailout money, like Citigroup, Bank of America and JP Morgan, have been engaging in “fanciful accounting” of what they owe and what they own by relocating of their less-than-healthy assets off the books, in shadow corporations. Rep. Brad Sherman has described the process as, “apples on one balance sheet and oranges on another.”

According to RGE Monitor, off-balance-sheet operations have skyrocketed over the last 15 years. From 1992 to 2007, on-balance-sheet assets grew by 200 percent, while off-balance-sheet assets grew by 1,518 percent. In 2007, it was estimated that there was 15.9 times more money parked in off-balance-sheet operations than in on-the-book operations. Not all off-book assets are toxic. Some financial institutions might park assets off their books if they are planning, for instance, to sell them. However, in rough economic times, off-balance sheet accounting allows banks to veil their losses from investors, regulators, and even insiders.

“This turns out to be a really important benefit [for a bank] if it happens to be insolvent,” Weissman added. “And many believe that if you total Citigroup’s assets and liabilities, it is insolvent.”

As of July, Citigroup appeared to have the most off-book assets — an estimated $1.1 trillion. But they aren’t alone. As of July 2008, JP Morgan Chase & Co. had more than $400 billion off their books. Bank of America had $48.2 billion off the books before it bought Merrill Lynch. “If you start adding up all the potential exposures, it’s a huge number,” Sam Golden, former ombudsman for the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told Bloomberg. “The banks will say that it was disclosed. Investors are saying, ‘Yeah, but it was cryptic.’”

Disclosure rules for off-balance sheet operations are notably less strict than those for assets on the books. Neri Bukspan, chief accountant for Standard & Poor’s told Bloomberg, “A lot of information tends to disappear.”

The use of the off-balance-sheet assets was a core part of the Enron scandal, where they were able to wrap debt inside of debt, using obscure corporations, so no one could track what they owed and what they owned. After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was set in place, there were efforts to address the problems with off-book assets. But after heavy lobbying by two main trade groups, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the American Securitization Forum, banks were given special exemptions.

In September of 2008 as the financial crisis was coming into full view, the Senate Baking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing, discussing off-balance sheet operations. Senator Jack Reed recalled Enron: “This phenomenon of moving assets off the balance sheets is eerily familiar. We recall back in the days of Enron that its schemes to manufacture false profits included special purpose entities that conducted transactions off-balance sheet. The goal was to avoid financial reporting. While no one is necessarily suggesting scandals of the Enron kind, we cannot fail to admit the irony. We are dealing with a similar problem yet again, only six years later.”

George P. Miller, Executive Director of the American Securitization Forum, said that moving assets off-book back on to the books would cause dangerous swelling of balance sheets. He added, “There are many other steps that the industry can and should undertake to promote broader and better transparency about risk exposures in these vehicles, whether they are on or off-balance sheet.”

But Donald Young, former member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board countered, “We just had an investment bank [Lehman Brothers] go bankrupt with a fair value balance sheet that showed it had plenty of assets and liabilities. And it almost seems like financial reporting is out of control and not trusted and not believed in. And I think what we do here has got to establish transparency. If the transparency is such that we’re going to bring out some bad news that wasn’t there before, that’s a risk. But I think the benefits of reestablishing confidence in the markets will overwhelm that.”

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are revising the rules so some off-book assets will have to be reported on the books. However, the changes won’t be effective until January 2010 at the earliest. In March at a House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Sherman complained about this lag. He told the chairman of the FASB, Bob Herz, “If you guys can’t act quickly and logically, perhaps the regulatory accountants need to act and depart from what is a somewhat illogical and certainly slow process that you’ve got.”

In the meantime, in a recent letter to his employees, Pandit has said Citigroup is having its best quarter since 2007 and the bank had conducted its own internal stress tests with positive results. But Weissman says something doesn’t add up. “Either they’ve done a lot of due diligence in a short amount of time that they hadn’t done before, or the stories are incompatible.”

Crossposted at Alternet.

Of course this is populist rage, but it goes to show you how angry folks are about how out of whack the pay is right now; especially when it come to corporations that receive bailout money.

The numbers…

American voters say 81 – 16 percent that the government should limit executive compensation at companies receiving federal help, and say 47 – 44 percent that boards of directors and top managers at these companies should be forced to resign, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Support for income limits is strong among Democrats, Republicans and independent voters and in all income groups, but the call for forced resignations drops as income rises.

So a sign of socialism spreading across the country? No, not really, as the followup question proves…

And voters oppose 64 – 30 percent trying to limit compensation at firms which do not receive federal bail-out funds. Low-income voters oppose such a move 56 – 35 percent.

Here’s the thing…I don’t think caps should be put on corporations in general, but do I think they need to wise up and realize that giving somebody a $20 million bonus for running the company into a ground is grossly irresponsible? Of course.

Do we need to legislate that? Probably not at this point, but it would have been nice to tie executive compensation to real performance instead of perceived. Because when you get to that level and you have so much responsibility for the livelihoods of others, some common sense regulations might not be a bad idea.

What do you think?

And after the AIG mess, I say we give it to him. How we allowed one company to take down the entire system still feels unreal to me. How on earth could we allow that to go down? Crazy, crazy, crazy.

But it did happen and we are suffering massive fallout as a result, so we have to make absolutely sure we’re protected. And, like it or not, the only way to do that is give the government more power.

From Bloomberg…

The authority would allow the Treasury, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve, regulators and the president, to step in and more easily combat problems at systemically important institutions on the verge of failure, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. AIG has received $182.5 billion in government bailout funds, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“We must ensure that our country never faces this situation again,” Geithner is expected to say according to excerpts of his testimony obtained by Bloomberg News. “To achieve that goal the administration and Congress have to work together to enact comprehensive regulatory reform and eliminate gaps in supervision.”

The expanded powers, which require Congressional approval, could help monitor risk and detect problems across an array of financial-services firms to prevent shocks to the global economy such as the one caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September. [...]

It would also ensure proper accountability when taxpayer funds are provided to institutions in extreme circumstances, like AIG, which is now 80 percent owned by the government. The authority would provide the government with various tools including the ability to break contracts on executive compensation commitments, like those at the center of the furor over the insurance-giant’s $165 million in bonuses.

More transparency and more accountability.

What’s not to like about this?

And remember, since global commerce is so tied to our banking system, we have a responsibility not only to our taxpayers, but also the rest of the world. Because don’t kid yourself by thinking that China’s public calls to consider replacing our currency in the reserve basket didn’t come as a direct result of letting firms like AIG overleverage themselves to the point of insolvency.

This is more political theatre than anything, but the populist rage against those irresponsible bonuses is at a fever pitch and if Obama doesn’t handle this one smartly it could seriously hurt the administration’s chances to get more bailout money down the road if it’s needed.

From CBS:

(CBS/AP) The Obama administration is looking for ways to recoup at least some of the $165 million American International Group, Inc. paid out in bonuses over the weekend, despite accepting billions in government aid to stay afloat, reports CBS News correspondent Peter Maer.

The White House continues to negotiate with AIG to bring any payments in line with the government’s priorities, an administration official told CBS News.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak Monday morning on AIG while rolling out his plan to help small businesses. He’s expected to voice anger over the bonuses and could elaborate on administration efforts to recover some of the money, reports Maer.

The administration official said that the bonuses “long been known about inside and outside AIG. But we didn’t want to accept them.”

The White House is seeking what are described as “mechanisms” to recover money spent on bonuses, but the company insists some of the bonuses are part of legally binding contracts signed before the government’s bailout.

That last bit of info is particularly important because I don’t think people understand that these contracts were in place before the government stepped in. So there’s little to no recourse the government can take right now besides breaking those contracts to appease the masses. But is that a precedent that any of you would be comfortable with? Doubt it.