Barack Obama, Year-end Bonuses | featured news

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is not a lawyer, nor does he play one on TV. So when just about every question at Tuesday's afternoon briefing concerned bonuses at insurance giant AIG, Gibbs had a non-answer at the ready. "I'm not a contracts lawyer," he said at one point, later explaining that he was "not a contract lawyer," either. When asked whether the president could simply deny more money to AIG unless it scrapped bonuses, he repeated: "Again, I'd refer you to a contract lawyer, which I'm not one."

The Obama administration sought to reduce the bonuses, but the insurer, which received more than $170 billion in aid, said it was obligated to pay them.

President Barack Obama issued a withering critique Thursday of Wall Street corporate behavior, calling it "the height of irresponsibility" for employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their crumbling financial sector received a bailout from taxpayers.