John Sides suggests a correlation between the size of government's bailout payout to AIG and the fact that AIG spent more on lobbying than any other bailout recipient. Conversely, the company that spent the least on lobbying Congress, Lehman Brothers, received the lowest bailout payment.
I don't have a problem accepting the claim that bailout capital was not doled out according to the best interests of the citizenry or for the sake of the general welfare. The money was passed out according to who pushed Democrats and Republicans hard enough or called in favors for subsidies. Main Street is going to see very little of this money because Main Street doesn't have a corps of lobbyists to compete on Capitol Hill.
One of my friends from college supplied the data for that post.
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