Against The Aig Lynch Mob

Jared Bernstein, chief economist to Vice President Cheney, signaled on ABC's "The Week" that President Obama would not sign the House bill to impose a special tax on AIG's executive bonuses.

I think the president would be concerned that this bill may have some problems in going too far -- the House bill may go too far in terms of some -- some legal issues, constitutional validity, using the tax code to surgically punish a small group. That -- that may be a dangerous way to go.

That said, let's see what comes out of the Senate. He has not said he won't sign this bill. Let's see what comes out of the Senate. Let's see what gets to his desk. ...

[T]he idea of going back and kind of clawing back contracts that were legitimately made, that is something we need to consider.

What happened in the House last week was a lynching. That doesn't mean that the AIG bonuses were legitimate. They weren't. But that's no excuse: any more than it's an excuse that probably many of the people lynched on the American frontier were in fact guilty.