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Americans are coping with it the American way. TV comedians are mocking the daylight robbery. President Barack Obama has angrily vowed a quick fix (which raised the question of why he had been unaware of the bonus scheme in the first place, as his administration poured massive bail-out cash into AIG). Countless commentaries and editorials are condemning the company with one voice. Web blogs and forums are on fire. The Republicans are calling the Democrats the "party for bankers", only to be rightly reminded that much, if not all, of the financial infamy developed under their own watch.

Capitalism, the true "elite" of the United States of America, has been testing the nation's conscience, and with each passing day a new challenge presents itself. The bail-out plan was already absurd if you consider that taxpayers' money is being given to the banks, who will loan parts of it to taxpayers and charge them interest. The bonus scheme, defended as the best way to keep the best brains at AIG - yes, the same best brains who created the credit default swaps - simply turns it into a complete joke.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke recently had this analogy to defend the massive bail-out: You have a neighbour who is a risk to everybody because he smokes in bed. One day he sets fire to his house, and you may say to yourself, "Let his house burn down. It's fine with me." But then, what if your house is made of wood, and is too close to his house. And what if the whole town is made of wood? Well, the right thing to do is put out that fire first.

That sounds reasonable, until the Americans realised that they are not only helping put out the fire, but also making sure the man has a nice new house plus a swimming pool and, more likely than not, will now take Cuban cigars to bed.

Some critics have called it a betrayal of democracy, a sad example of how Wall Street's greedy few can pull the strings on the government "by the people". It remains to be seen what really caused Obama's about-face yesterday, when he described the bonus issue as a question of values and vowed to leave no stone unturned in search of a legal way to beat AIG's "contratual obligations" to give the extra payout. Was he a leader reacting angrily to an important detail that had escaped his scrutiny, or did the anger demonstrate belated realisation about moral drawbacks of the overall bail-out plan?

No matter how the bonus issue transpires, Americans may be still too afraid to face the moral question this scandal has pointed them to. The current financial crisis is all about people getting far more than they deserved, seemingly legitimately - and the same people always went far beyond they should have done to maintain or upgrade their status quo.

That is the only way capitalism can work, and as everybody is busy helping put out the fire, nobody has presented a concrete idea on how to prevent it from happening again.

We are seeing Americans' love-hate relationship with capitalism. They are in effect the closest neighbour to the man who loves to smoke in bed. They know their houses are also made of wood, so they will loathe the man but be there for him at the same time. They don't have a choice.

Now, here's the trap. In trying to put out the fire, America as a whole has to make sure it will not itself become the AIG of the world, the much-abhorred neighbour who often falls asleep with a burning cigarette in his hand. Neighbours like Japan, China or Russia must be watching pretty closely. Yes, this global neighbourhood is also filled with wooden homes, but how strong their senses of community are remains anyone's guess.

Some of the neighbours have HUGE amounts of US bonds in their hands, so America has to inspire confidence while handling its crisis. The situation, according to doomsayers, is equivalent to people surrounding a smoke-filled house, each carrying two buckets in each hand - one containing water and the other gasoline.