Outraged at AIG? Take your spot in line. While you’re there, gawk at all of your esteemed company. First you’ll find both aisles of Congress—“This is an outrage,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be repeating over and over again to Barney Frank, who will be murmuring about misbehavior and abuse of the system. Further ahead, you’ll find Ben Bernanke, the normally placid Fed chairman, reliving his two-time denunciation of AIG as having made “unconscionable bets” and that AIG makes him “angry.” And even further ahead will be the three-headed Sumnerbama hydra, breathing populist fire until it runs out of gas—an “outrage,” spat the hydra on Monday.

At the front of the line, of course, you’ll find your place with the rest of the American hordes. Pitchforks and torches in hand, we’re all ready to skewer AIG—but for what? This week’s two galling pieces of news—that the company is paying out more employee bonuses and that it sent billions in bailout money to other banks—are so confusing and were revealed in such quick succession that it’s hard to figure out why we’re supposed to be pissed off. To help, The Big Money assembled this primer on what is and isn’t worth getting outraged over.

The bailout(s):

We can’t judge the latest bits of AIG news without establishing a baseline. Rather than repeat ad nauseam the history of AIG’s incompetence, I’ll offer three links. First, there’s this basic FAQ that TBM assembled immediately after the first bailout; second, this juicy investigative piece from the New York Times on AIG’s financial-products division; and third, this timeline of the four separate bailouts. Now for the numbers: The government is 79.9 percent invested in AIG, a commitment of $170 billion spread out over four interventions. It’s more money than we have invested in any of our other life-jacket rescues.

The outrage here is directed toward AIG’s blind sweeping of risk under the rug. Its credit-default swaps were symptomatic of the derivative thinking that screwed us over; certainly worthy of outrage. But the $170 billion number is deceiving—if we hadn’t given it to AIG, those mortgage-backed securities would have defaulted without any insurance, causing even more havoc and costing even more money. We would have just ended up giving the money to the banks instead of AIG.

Outrage rating:

The bonuses:

How do you reward a unit that was (basically) singularly responsible for losing you $99.3 billion in the past year? You give its employees $450 million in bonuses! And you pay for it with taxpayer money! This is akin to a college pooling tuition and giving more beer money to alcoholic frat brothers who treat the campus as a private vomitorium. Thus, the outrage; and that a government-appointed CEO is going along with it doesn’t help. AIG says it is legally obliged to give its financial-products division bonus money for the year. On its surface, the bonus money is especially nauseating because that $450 million comes from the same money pool populated by taxpayer dollars. This is the detail that has hurried so many politicians to their soapboxes. Now New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is getting involved, issuing subpoenas to find out who received the bonuses, which AIG now says were issued on Friday. This, of course, follows the populist remarks from national politicians earlier in the day. Hell hath no fury like a politico’s constituency scorned.

But before you join the politicians in their outrage, consider the nuances. No matter what, we’ll probably get at least $165 million back, which is the amount of bonuses paid out on Friday. Barring a total blockade of payments, the administration has said it will at least demand the money be returned through AIG’s loan repayment. It follows, then, that one way or another we’ll also be able to recoup the $230 million due to be paid in 2010. So, whenever AIG gets around to paying us back, AIG will really be the one who actually paid most of the bonuses. (This, of course, assumes AIG will be paying us back.) But of course then those greedy dolts still get rewarded for their bile. And for our loss.

Outrage rating:

The payout disclosure:

Under pressure from Congress, AIG has finally lightened the tint on some of its windows. It released the partial listing of where some of the bailout money has been spent, and the picture is more or less as expected. AIG tossed $12.1 billion to states and tens of billions more to financial institutions (a mix of owed payments and collateral). On the surface, it looks like the move in the right direction—a step towards the transparency the administration has promised.

But there are caveats. Why did AIG take six months to disclose where our money is being spent? And why has AIG still not wholly disclosed how it has used all taxpayer money? Its report was more of a PowerPoint presentation done by a teenager with a short attention span. It was only six pages and included just the largest recipients of funds.

There’s also grumbling that much of the money is being paid to foreign institutions like Société Générale, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank. That, though, is an inevitable consequence of living in a globalized financial system. To tell AIG not to repay foreign banks wouldn’t have just been unethical. It would have been stupid. Depriving foreign banks from money they’re owed ends up hurting our own American banks. Such is the globalized credit crisis.

Plus, AIG has done its fair share of unethical and stupid things already. No need for any more.

Outrage rating: