The AIG (NYSE: AIG) bonus brouhaha has yielded a new angle now that indignant AIG executive vice president, Jake DeSantis, has resigned from the company and forwarded his resignation letter to CEO Edward Liddy to the New York Times (NYSE: NYT). DeSantis's letter certainly deserves a read.

DeSantis's arguments are well reasoned, discussing his hard work, how he agreed to trudge on for $1 base salary while counting on the promise that a retention bonus would be forthcoming this month. Then (shocker!) the American people get ticked off by millions paid out in bonuses. (DeSantis claims he wasn't at fault and that most of those culpable have left the company already -- although it was his department that originated the AIG mess.) Congress gets on its soap box to reflect popular outrage, while Liddy doesn't defend his people and calls the bonuses "distasteful," etc. (And of course, many of us have realized by now that the powers that be that crafted the bailouts should have taken this sort of thing into account from the very beginning.)

DeSantis said he wouldn't keep his own bonus, but will instead donate it. (Given the public outrage, that's a good move.) And, of course, he's also saying, "Take this job and shove it," due to the situation.

I am glad that we get to see the point of view of one of the individuals involved in the bonus fracas. It's good for us to read and contemplate.

However, here's the thing that keeps bugging the heck out of me:

Without government assistance, AIG would be bankrupt.

News flash: Once you are propped up by the government, it's nothing close to what seemed to have become the market "norm," when lucrative bonuses were allowed to flow like water, guys. And, actually, given the way a natural market environment would work, the fact that AIG still exists at all doesn't really make any sense. This isn't business as usual; it's arguably not even really business.

The government's refusal to allow failed companies (I'm also looking at you, Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM), Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)) to fail just keeps on proving the flaws of that practice. It's creating major problems, philosophical and otherwise. Should large "retention bonuses" be paid out to "fix" something that should have failed? How generous, when taxpayer money is involved? How about when that something that should have failed has been bailed out four times so far? Is that fixed, or even close to it? What the heck's going on here?

I'm glad the letter's out there, and that point of view deserves to be heard. However, I still think that some of these financial types are out of touch with the reality of their own dire and completely unnatural situations, and still feel awfully entitled to an awful lot, regardless of the performance of their companies or the financial effects on the taxpayers.

Here's some bonus coverage of AIG bonuses: