Something for Nothing

The New York Times reports that Wall Street bonuses hit $18.4 billion last year despite the worst performing year in the financial services market since the Great Depression. Losses on Wall Street could hit $35 billion. Read more about these losses and the 44% decline in bonuses here.

It's unclear, according to Tom DiNapoli, NY State Comptroller, whether these bonuses were paid from the TARP money intended to make banks more liquid so that money would start flowing again to business, home owners, car buyers, and you and me.

One would think that bonuses are paid as a reward, not for getting the country and the world into this mess.

According to talkingpointsmemo.com, AIG, the once largest insurance company in the world, the one that the US government had to bailout because if it failed, everything would allegedly come piling down, paid bonuses to the unit responsible for selling the credit default swaps that started its plunge. $450 million in bonuses!

And Merrill Lynch, the failing brokerage giant that Bank of America bought at bargain prices to save the US economy distributed $4 billion in bonuses to its underperforming executives and brokers just before the sale was completed. The bonuses came after Merrill Lynch posted $15 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2008. NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is launching an investigation into the timing. Click here to read Cuomo's statement.

According to John Thain, who just resigned as CEO of Merrill Lynch, you have to pay people to keep them. But are these the people we want to keep? TheDailyBeast.com has a list of the sixteen worst outrages attributed to John Thain.

Even if the exact dollars weren't paid out of TARP, the issue is that the TARP rescue money made these bonuses possible. Why did Congress ever give such broad authority to Henry Paulson so that he could feed the greediest industry in the world without restraints?