GOING JOHN GALT? That's the theme at Sykes Writes today, with links to a roundup of push-back by the trading houses and to a very public resignation by a senior manager of A.I.G.

I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

There are several possible reactions to the resignation, which as of this evening has produced 330 Technorati links. Betsy Newmark suggests that the people who could do the best job untangling the assets are precisely the people being driven out.

In this environment, some of those very financiers being so demonized today are the very ones who will have to step up to join in Tim Geithner's plan for the toxic assets. As Vincent Reinhart points out in the WSJ today, the Geithner plan depends on those same financiers deciding to go into business with the federal government in order to make outsized profits.

They understand trade-offs at 11-D.

On the other hand, I was irritated by the guy's cluelessness and disdain for politics. A basic mistake that these executives made was to agree to work for $1 in exchange for a bonus at the end of the year. Most people consider a bonus to be extra money that one gets for extraordinary success. Most people never get a bonus. And when the public owns your company, executives have to be conscious of political considerations. They are now public employees. The only reason that this man had a job all year was because of the government and the public's (reluctant) willingness to send them their tax money. He can't complain about politics and at the same time receive its benefits.

There was also some dishonesty about those $1 salaries. Make the people think that you are the good guys while taking secret bonuses on the side? That's not cool.

There are several basic questions on the table. If we own the financial industry, should finance people make average government salaries? Instead of making $400,000 a year, should they make $60,000 a year? Are we going to see huge attrition rates?

Those guys work really long hours with a lot of stress at jobs that aren't all that interesting only because of those fat salaries. If we chase them away are we going to be left with the types of people who run DMV?

Timothy Burke extends the ownership argument.

I would be remiss if I did not reply with a few comments. Since your company is now effectively owned by the government to which I pay taxes, consider this a reply from one of your employers.

The conversations in progress at these sites suggest more to follow.