More on those bonuses...

Along with the claim of legally-tied hands, it's been said that Wall Street simply must pay princely bonuses to keep "good people" from jumping ship.

Well, riddle me this, then, Batman:

... New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo confirmed in a letter to Congress that AIG paid 73 employees bonuses of more than $1 million each.

Cuomo also wrote that 11 of the employees no longer work for the company. The largest bonus paid was $6.4 million; seven other people also received more than $4 million each. (emphasis mine)

Um... if you're given a retention bonus, and then you're no longer retained, doesn't that sorta nullify any legal claims that you might have had. (We'll put aside, for the moment, whether or not you should get any sort of bonus after running your company into the ground.)