All the stories of corporate pay packages, offsite conferences, bonuses, and office redecorations can be quite infuriating. It is a challenging time in America where so much wealth has been erased in the form of retirement savings and home values. People are hurting and they want answers as to why this happened, and they definitely want somebody to be held responsible. These are understandable reactions as we all search to make sense of this disaster so we can recover and ensure it will not happen again.

During this time our Government has been feigning outrage with these events even though they are at the foundation of them occurring. It seems every time there is some fiasco, it somehow leads back to the Government either by faulty legislation, unenforced regulations, or just the old reliable covering up the facts while denying there was any knowledge of the problem. It is then followed with the show trials that never produce anything, the calls for new laws and regulations, the finger pointing, the endless committees, probes, commissions, and the promises that this will not stand in the future. These evasions are business as usual, but it would be nice to hear them accept some responsibility for their actions in the creation of these failures, but it serves them better to point elsewhere.

We the public have been outraged over reports of $165mm in bonuses being paid out to executives at AIG, and this is understandable, but the real issue should be why $170+ billion of taxpayer money was even injected into the firm and who is accountable for that money. The bonuses, as offensive as they are, amount to less than .10% of the money infused, should we instead be scrutinizing the other 99.90% and where it was likely squandered? There are hundreds of billions of dollars being haphazardly spent at every turn and the outrage is fixated on bonuses or offsite conferences, and the politicians are more than willing to jump on this bandwagon of outrage knowing it keeps the attention off of them for their bad judgment or lack of accountability. AIG is just one example, but any of the recent bailouts or scandals can be debated and the same thought applies. We should stop being consumed by the minuscule disbursements while overlooking the exceedingly massive amounts being spent on our behalf courtesy of the U.S. Government.

Our Government has absolutely no hesitation in spending any amount of our money they deem appropriate to supposedly rescue the economy. While we are squabbling about bonuses and pointing partisan fingers, they are burying us alive in debt, alienating investors, and expanding the size and scope of Government. These are the events of significance that we should be focusing our attention on with sharp interest. The busier we are chasing the trivial matters and ignoring the bigger picture, the easier it is for them to push through their desired agenda with little scrutiny. To borrow a reference from the game “Clue,” the real crime being committed is likely the Government in the capitol with a checkbook.