My tree business pays AIG around $30,000 a year for workers' compensation insurance. When an employee wrecked and destroyed my truck and chipper and was not hurt, but claimed he was all by his own hand. (Gotta love that no-fault workers' comp insurance) The adjuster instead of properly desposing of the case ... drew it out into a fisaco that led to my rates going sky high. Now that no other insurers will offer me coverage, except AIG themselves at this BS rate, I thought the least they could do with that money is maybe hire some adjusters that know what the hell they're doing or maybe send someone down to my office to kiss my ass every once in a while.

I have to go with the advertising crowd on this one. Sponsorships are just a means to advertise a company. While I'm definitely against the bailouts (what's wrong with re-organizing under bankruptcy?), a business still has to have a marketing department.

I definitely agree that taxpayer money shouldn't be wasted on bailouts and it is frustrating to see AIG and Citibank spending so much despite their needing a bailout.

I do think that Bank of America is getting a bad rap here. The problem is that the big banks were all forced to take a big chunk of bailout money in exchange for some preferred stock. I work at a Bank, so I hear quite a bit about these things.

When some of the large banks balked at taking the money, considerable pressure was placed on them to take the money.

Goldman Sachs was in obvious trouble and needed the money, and with the fishy business of the Treasury's blatant favoritism to GS, with letting Lehman Brothers (competitor) fail while bailing out AIG (huge investment for GS, and a GS boardmember was the only non-government person at the bailout meeting), they needed to make the other Banks look just as bad. If none of the other big banks (about 8 or 10) took the bailout money and Goldman Sachs did, they would look even more obvious in their favoritism.

Bank of America and Chase are doing quite well and will continue to gobble up competitors for pennies on the dollar until we are left with 2 or 3 national banks.

The whole fuss over paying huge bonuses is also a joke. If they didn't need the bailout money but were forced to take it, and there normal income was in the billions, why shouldn't they pay out large bonuses to executives?

Again, I disagree with the bailout completely. But don't criticize companies that are forced to take money when they don't need it.

Sorry Neal, but I can't go with you on this one.

A - There should be NO BAILOUTS, for anyone. We have the right to fail in this country.

B - Do those that take these unconstituntional bailouts no longer have the freedom to run their businesses as they see fit, including how they spend their advertising dollars?

C - I suspect your disdain for the bailouts and general status of the country and its self-inflicted wound of an economy led to your knee-jerk/emotional reaction.

Does UAW still sponsor a car in NASCAR? I know that isn't cheap.

Citi is still a private company. We shouldn't be bailing them out in the first place. If they choose to spend the bailout money on Advertising thats their right. My solution is don't give them any money.

Those numbers all seem pretty high. However, condemning the sponsorship without seeing data is poor judgement. For all we know, those ads bring in $40 million for Bank of America. We don't know that BoA or any other entity is losing money from those sponsorships. It's an investment. Before commanding them to release those sponsorhips, perhaps we should be studying their returns. An entire industry is based off advertising. Why? Because it brings in more money than it uses. If sponsoring didn't work, the company wouldn't pay that high of a price (assuming the leadership is receiving accurate data). You know how the free market works and right now the free market says that sponsor is worth $20 million or $400 million. Perhaps the prices of those sponsorships are inflated. Can you tell us what they are truly worth?

Those sponsorships should be investigated with all other segments of those companies looking for a bailout. Don't just condemn something because you feel it is wasteful. Look at the data that supports it.

I wonder how many of these sports facilities were build using corporate welfare anyways? But to come to the defense of the banks. It is probably kinda hard to get out of a contract like that once you sign it. Besides if the banks cancelled these contracts we'd then be bailing out the stadium owners!