I don't think stockholders have enough power.
It should be much easier to sue executives for violations of their fiduciary duty.
It isn't the government that should be outraged by AIG bonuses, it should be AIG stockholders. Though of course I think the government is the majority holder.
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
