THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And when one of those people is the President of the country that bailed your dumb ass out of financial ruin and another is the Attorney General of the state your insurance company does business in, you had better find a graceful way to surrender.

“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

Later in the day, a White House official disclosed that the administration would use a pending $30 billion installment for A.I.G. to recoup the $165 million in retention payments to A.I.G. employees in the business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

“Treasury will be using this facility to address the excessive retention payments made to the A.I.G. Financial Products employees, which Treasury found to be completely unacceptable given that A.I.G. is already surviving on taxpayer funds,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Treasury will be adding provisions to its new facility aimed at making taxpayers whole for the amounts of the offensive payments.”

Discount the payment to AIG by the amount of the bonuses and require repayment at face value, a time honored loan method.

The attorney general is seeking the list of employees who will receive these bonuses, as well as their job information and performances. Mr. Cuomo said that the company had failed to heed a previous request for this list.

Mr. Cuomo is also demanding the contracts guaranteeing these bonuses and the names of individuals who developed and negotiated the agreements.

A spokeswoman for A.I.G. told DealBook in an e-mailed statement: “We are in ongoing contact with the Attorney General and will respond appropriately to the subpoena.”

During the call, he said that he is not seeking to “micromanage” private businesses.

Mr. Cuomo is already seeking information on bonus payments made by Merrill Lynch just before it was acquired by Bank of America and before it reported a worse-than-expected multi-billion dollar loss.

In both cases, Mr. Cuomo said he is trying to determine whether the bonuses were in violation of New York State’s fraudulent conveyance laws or other securities laws.

Just about every derivative contract would be in violation of the spirit of the fraudulent conveyance laws.