Pres. Barack Obama says his administration will “pursue every legal avenue” to stop insurance giant American International Group from paying $165 million in executive bonuses.

It’s nice to hear that, but it’s a little after-the-fact. Not that long ago, the government had considerably more leverage over AIG.

Despite this administration’s reflexive instinct to talk about the problems it inherited, the fourth round of AIG’s government assistance — an additional $30 billion — was approved March 2.

Why couldn’t someone at Treasury* have made that assistance contingent on not handing out additional bonuses to managers who put the company in this hole?

* I suppose it might help to have someone besides Tim Geithner working at the Treasury Department, to help manage issues like these . . .