One of the misshapen mutants forged in the fallout of the recent financial fiasco is a paradoxical populism. Rightly enraged over the parasitical mosquitoes living off the middle class sheep, they stand in willful ignorance that these lambs are being led to the slaughterhouse.Recent outrage has focused on two families of incidents: large bonuses paid to executives of failed and failing companies and a slew of Ponzi schemes revealed by the chaos of Wall Street.During the past two decades, AIG has contributed more than $9 million to federal candidates and parties. This makes AIG one of the 100 largest political contributors of all time, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan research Web site.Since the crisis began, AIG has received $170 billion in bailout money.Of the $170 billion, $165 million was used to pay bonuses.That is, $170,000 million were given as a bailout to AIG, of which $165 million was used to pay bonuses.All else held equal, I would rather have senators debate how to spend $165 million of bonuses than trillions of dollars of “stimulus money.”Given government’s track record of misdirecting resources, public outcry is perhaps not a bad way to limit the damage they can do.But I agree with the majority view — Wall Street fat cats should not be able to profit from taxpayer money.By the end of November 2008, the federal government had already committed $7.36 trillion to the economic recovery, according to a November 2008 MSNBC report. Sticking to the earlier notation, we are talking about $7,360,000 million.These measures could be forgiven if they worked. Throughout the 1990s, Japan suffered a crisis very similar to our own. From 1992 to 1995, they spent 65 trillion yen on six stimulus packages.The result was a “lost decade.”If we wish to be proportional with our energy, the rage over the government’s response to the crisis should be more than 44,000 times greater than the outcry over the AIG bonuses.Similar claims can be made about the recent ponzimonium.A Ponzi scheme defrauds clients by paying old investors with new investors rather than the profits from investing. Though they can be extremely profitable in the short run, they can only continue working for as long as new investors can be found.With less people willing to invest, Ponzi schemes are being identified at an alarming rate. As Warren Buffett said, it’s “only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”The most infamous conman is Bernard Madoff, who made away with as much as $65 billion. The Stanford Financial Group also   defrauded many local investors of much of their life savings.Those unfortunate enough to be caught in such a scheme have a right to be angry, and there is nothing wrong with sympathizing with their plight.But paying old “investors” with money from new “investors” is the definition of the Social Security system. The old receive payments directly from the money stolen from the young’s paychecks.Unlike Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which people only voluntarily invested in, participation in Social Security is compulsory.In early 2008, the Government Accountability Office claimed the government needed to invest more than $50 trillion to pay for future obligations to Social Security and similar programs.That number can only be higher since the recent bailouts.It’s easy to shake our fists at the AIG’s and Madoffs of the world, but this only serves to distract us from crimes a thousand times larger.Daniel Morgan is a 21-year-old economics junior from Baton Rouge.—-Contact Daniel Morgan at [email protected]