"Merrill Lynch Execs Paid Themselves $15 Billion on $21.5 Billion in Losses in 2008
.... They continued to pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses for the year despite those losses. It will be interesting to see if there is any meaningful investigation of this. We doubt it very much. The Democratic leadership have shown themselves to be a lot of noise and little meaningful action so far, and almost all the Republicans are outrageous hypocrites. Such is the state of the deep capture of the government....
JUST PLANE DESPICABLE
Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet - only this time, it's the taxpayers who are getting screwed. Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue, the airhead execs pushed through the purchase of a new Dassault Falcon 7X, according to a source familiar with the deal....
Update: Citigroup drops jet deal amid concern from Obama
Did they Sig Heil salute, too?
The news that Merrill Lynch paid out $15 billion in bonuses is sure to ignite new questions about the wisdom of bailing out Wall Street. Merrill Lynch took $10 billion from the TARP, allegedly to fill holes in its balance sheet. But instead of using that to repair its financial health, it simply put the money into the pockets of its employees. There is no way to defend this disgusting payout.
But that won’t stop Bank of America, which now owns Merrill, from defending the bonuses. And across Wall Street there are lots of people who actually believe that Merrill did the right thing.
How can so many smart people be so dumb? Easily. There is a sick psychology of entitlement on Wall Street that was created during the bubble years. Many simply cannot believe that they do not deserve huge pay packages. Their brains have not caught up with the idea that they are working in broken institutions that would be unable to pay to keep the lights on if not for the fact that Washington has given them billions of taxpayer dollars...."
