The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression has devolved into a B-movie where the cops and robbers have reversed roles.

The near-penniless taxpayer is the cop on the beat, wielding only a verbal pitchfork. Those in power are under the sway of the robbers, paying them ever-steeper ransoms, convinced that if they don't agree to ridiculous demands, those who have kidnapped the economy will kill it.

On 15 March, with the push of a button, $165m in bonuses went into the bank accounts of the bad guys at AIG. It's up to the new sheriff in town to put things right. US president Barack Obama has replaced the laissez-faire Bush administration officials, like Wall Street sympathiser Henry Paulson, with armed and dangerous regulators who would bring reckless Masters of the Universe to justice.

Unfortunately, it's hard to scare the bad guys when your new treasury secretary comes across like Barney Fife. Paulson was too sympathetic to the bankers, including those at Goldman Sachs. Timothy Geithner is afraid of them. The new team took over with a whimper, not a bang.

No Drama Obama doesn't know when to give up the cool that worked so well during the presidential campaign for a little righteous fury. He knew AIG had no shame when, after the first bailout, company officials flew off for a week of mani-pedis at a California spa and a partridge hunt in England. Would you trust them after that not to grab whatever they could get their hands on?

If he was sickened by that display, Obama didn't show it. He took a while to react after learning last week that the US government, which owns almost 80% of AIG, had done nothing to amend contracts providing bonuses to the risk jockeys in the financial-products division that helped get the United States into this mess.

AIG chief executive Edward Liddy, calling it all "distasteful" in testimony before the US congress last week, asked that the bonus babies give at least half back.

It didn't have to get to this if Obama hadn't bought AIG's line that, if the company fails, we all fail, an argument swallowed by most Republicans in congress until they recently discovered their sublimated outrage. A provision that would have prohibited bonuses was stripped out of the stimulus bill.

Both congress and the treasury's fingerprints are all over that. Obama put down any trace of emotion even as he felt obliged to express some after his team was insufficiently upset over the AIG bonuses on last weekend's television talk shows. Channeling David Letterman, pausing to clear his throat theatrically, Obama said: "Excuse me, I'm choked up with anger here."

The time for irony is over. Obama is mystified, finding it "hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses". How, he asked, "do they justify this outrage?"

Wait a minute. You're the one with the answers. We have the questions. Wasn't it Geithner who helped design the AIG bailout? Amid calls for Geithner's head, Obama compared him with Alexander Hamilton and said "it's my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don't make them".

He pledged to make sure "we never put ourselves in this kind of position again". How about getting us out of that position now?

Last week, Obama became the first president to sit on Jay Leno's couch. Leno deserved the honour. He announced last week he would put on a free show – snacks included – to lighten up life for the beleaguered citizens of Detroit. When Leno found out that a few scalpers had put up tickets on Ebay, he blasted them on his show and asked Ebay to take the postings down. He's also going to do another show to make sure everyone gets in who wants to. Amazing, isn't it, how a late-night comic can so easily put a stop to profiteering?

Bloomberg