Professor Daniel JH Greenwood wrote an article for the Huffington Post on the AIG bonuses.

How to recoup the AIG bonuses - Let them eat cake
By Daniel JH Greenwood
The Huffington Post
March 18, 1009

EXCERPT
Let's get real. This may be a nation of laws, but contracts are not sacred, and employment contracts are less sacred than any. When Enron's executives destroyed the company, Enron's secretaries lost their pensions. When General Motors' executives failed to plan for the possibility that oil prices might go up or pollution controls might get serious and ran the company into the ground, everyone agreed that its retirees, who fulfilled their end of the bargain years ago, must accept that they aren't going to get what their contract says. Every company that goes into bankruptcy -- and AIG would have been bankrupt several times over were it not for Federal subsidies -- rewrites employment contracts. Indeed, as airline and steel company employees know all too well, sometimes that is the main reason the company goes to the bankruptcy court in the first place.