Bonuses

Once upon a time a bonus was a payment for exceptional work. Today, it seems to mean a contractual agreement in which an executive of some financial enterprise such as Citi or AIG is guaranteed an astronomical amount of money no matter how well he does or how much money the company loses. It is just another form of win at all cost.
Because lawyers have been involved in arranging contracts and therefore contracts have a greater currency than profits, apparently the logical notion of executives foregoing bonuses when company profits tank is not feasible.
However, there is a solution. Have the feds pay the contract-based bonuses with government-issue derivatives based on, say, decreasing unemployment statistics and/or shrinking national debt. In other words, the bonuses would increase in value as the debt and/or unemployment shrinks. That would prevent actual tax dollars going to logically unwarranted bonuses for executives, and they would be paid with the government equivalent of what these bonus seekers used to get us in economic trouble to begin with: default-swap mortgage securities, derivatives, etc.
Instead of the government investing in these undeserving rich, force them to invest in economic recovery directly. Then their interest would be in seeing the recovery to its conclusion without reaping any further dividends that might undermine that full recovery. Rather than spending their time trying to “game” the economy in new and unregulated ways, they would be certain to see that Uncle Sam and the workforce of America would get their due.
Paying bonuses with the same type of currency that the Wall Street rascals traded in would be a fitting response to the outrage the American public feels toward reckless banks and insurance companies like AIG. If your company got bailout money, you personally get paid contractual bonuses in government sponsored derivatives tied to reducing national debt and unemployment.
As President Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.” Making federal bailout beneficiaries pay contractual corporate bonuses with government derivatives based inversely on proportional reduction of national debt and/or unemployment would serve our country well and would provide the Wall Street rascals with an opportunity to do community service within their professions.