Banker fury over tax 'witch-hunt', from the Financial Times:

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks.

“Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it,” said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. “This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG.”

Why do the politicians in Washington seem hell bent on further driving our economy into the ground? All because of some fake outrage from those who knew all along what was coming, and even wrote provisions protecting these bonuses into the February stimulus bill. Get used to this kind of governance in the future from our leaders; fake outrage over a manufactured crisis followed by rash and poorly planned legislative responses that have vast unintended consequences. And this doesn't even cover all the nonsense Congress passed on the sly while the talking heads were following their directives and focusing solely on bonuses and Cramer vs. Stewart. See michellemalkin.com for a roundup of these excesses. Thanks to Instapundit for the initial link, and be sure to read the whole thing.