Obama was on Jay Leno's show

The President came across as pleasant and very likeable. When pontificating on "the big mess" as he likes to keep calling the situation, he seemed quite superficial in his description and simplistic in describing AIG as an insurance company with a "hedge fund on top."

He didn't explain why it was necessary to throw so much money at AIG except to assure the audience that it would otherwise have destroyed the financial system.
1) Why wouldn't it have been better to let AIG go bankrupt and then save the system with taxpayer money in some other way?
2) How much money, and what's the point at which the Obamanian government throws in the towel and has AIG file for bankruptcy, anyway?

Jay Leno actually asked a very trenchant question: Congress today passed a bill taxing the bonuses of AIG executives at 90% ( presumably leaving the rest to be done by the states, primarily Connecticut). Leno said it made him nervous that Congress could just decide they didn't like someone and then tax the hell out of him.
1) Obama said that he had a good answer for that, that he'd give after a break for ads.
2) After the break, he did no such thing.
3) What Congress did shouldn't pass Constitutional muster but there was no mention of that, a strange omission for someone who claims to have taught Constitutional Law for ten years. Obama did mention that the contracts seem to have a clause to the effect that, if the bonuses are not timely paid, they get trebled.

Another interesting bit of advice from the President included the injunction that "the best and the brightest" should no longer aspire to be investment bankers but should, instead, become engineers, doctors, teacher, scientists and others who actually produced something. Funny, he didn't mention LAWYERS as a profession young people should not aspire to being. Not only do lawyers no produce much but actually constitute a deadweight loss to the economy

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/03/20/obama-on-leno-some-strikes-some-spin-and-a-gutterball/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090320/ap_on_en_tv/obama_special_olympics