5 Lessons From the AIG and Merrill Bonuses

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soundtracks of AL 5:26AM July 17, 2009

Great site. Keep doing.

soma constelllation of DC 7:48AM July 04, 2009

who wrote these great articles?

Kim of FL 8:30AM April 16, 2009

It's too late to get it back this time.
I don't think so. There is no good reason we all need to calm down; we need to continue to be irate and force the politicians and executives to think of the taxpayers. I think we can all agree that we have a bunch of useless, elected officials and appointees. They are all bowing to the huge financial PAC's that pay their election costs and provide the post-public office jobs. That still doesn't justify letting their mistakes allow the financial executives with no principles to continue to get away with their elitist antics. The idea that these were previous contracts that had to be honored has been poo-pooed by the idea of taxing the hell out of them; there's always a way to recover. The whining by the companies about this uproar is just more of their antics. And the idea that they need to retain the individuals that caused the problems is ludicrous; the company was irresponsible, let them lose out to the competition and if they do, we have lost something that didn't provide any value-add anyway. Companies who are worried about micro-management in the future of dealing with the government, must have something to hide anyway, as the ones who have taken us down.

Deano of AZ 12:01PM March 21, 2009

Instead of giving all these banks,insurance companies,and car manufacturers this bailout money,why not give every American $60,000 just like a stimulus was attempted last year.I don't know about you,but me and my wife would not have a credit card bill,a mortgage payment,college tuition bills,and because the banks would be the beneficiary of this bailout,they would still get the money that they claim they need. Now how would that not stimulate the economy??????

Dennis of AL 8:15PM March 20, 2009

The new toxic assets: bailout money. Congress is cutting off its nose to spite its face on this one. What company will accept bailout money when they see it means very public micromanaging of their business, including ex post facto laws, rules, and regulations and public demonization? So the economy will spiral further downward because the government has crippled its own ability to help. Everyone should just calm down. Next time, write the rules before handing out the money. It's too late to get it back this time.

henry of MD 8:26AM March 20, 2009

The Merrill Lynch bonuses are a classic example of the rampant greed on Wall Street. I was a former ML employee that was laid off with several other thousands last year.Rather than save employee jobs with $3.6 billion given out with bonuses, ML senior executives took care of their pockets. This is a outrage. ML historically paid bonuses the fourth week of January. This was done as a clear deception. Plus the executive that John Thain hired Krauss from Goldman Sachs walked away with $45 million for doing three weeks of work.I can't wait to see the names of the ML elite who think they deserve or feel entitled to these enormous sums of money as ML lost billions of dollars and laid off thousands. Plus most of these executives dumped there ML shares while telling employees to buy last year. The only thing they are entitled to is a jail cell.

Jack787 of NY 8:19AM March 20, 2009

Two other points. If you (the federal governement) are going to give a company $1.7 trillion dollars you better have more oversight in what that company is going to to with it. Barney Frank and Geitner are to blame as much as AIG. They failed at their jobs to protect the taxpayor and evidence shows that they knew about these bonuses, along with Obama long before it became public this week. The show of outrage by the Obama posse was nothing more than political timimng to show they "care" about the taxpayor. Heck, Geitner helped draw up the bail out bill when he was head of the Fed in NY.
Second, when they speak with anger over AIG and these bonuses and the waste why don't they look in the mirror and judge themselves with the same intensity. $160 million dollars is a trickle compared to the pork, the waste and the debt that Obama has put the country in, in just over 50 days in office and it the spending has juts begun. NO country in the world has ever spent its way out of a recession and it will not happen now and in 2 years when inflation hits it will make this recession look like peanuts.

Tom in NJ of NJ 9:36AM March 19, 2009