Bailout Banks’ Bonuses Could Surpass 2008 Levels
As further testament to Washington’s strategic use of your hard-earned cash, Reuters staff wrote today:
Eight major banks which were at the front of the line for government bailouts have already set aside $117.6 billion this year to pay employees, almost as much as they paid in all of 2008, a Reuters analysis has found.
If the banks continued that pace, they would far surpass what they paid in 2008 though fall short of the watershed paydays of 2007, when the financial sector was still booming, the analysis found.
The pay offered by top banks reflects the dramatic rebound at some of them, but also shows that industry conditions have not quite been restored to 2007 levels —before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the fire sale of Bear Stearns, industry analysts said.
Critics say it is also a sign that banks have learned few lessons from last year’s financial crisis, which has been widely blamed on Wall Street’s pursuit of short-term profits that pumped up pay.
“Banks don’t appear to have learned much, at least on the compensation side, from what we’ve been through,” said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University. “Don’t tell me you are bringing me back to the good old days of yesterday. Getting back to pre-Bear Stearns or Lehman is not fixing it. It is setting us up for another fall.”
Reuters identified the banks in question. From the piece:
The eight major banks that took a total of $165 billion in bailout funds were Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street and Wells Fargo…
Goldman, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street have repaid the billions they received.
If that’s the case, why then is Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo preparing to give out bonuses?
We’ll just have to hope more harsh language directed at the banks from Washington will do the trick this time, right?
Source:
“Bailed-Out US Banks Preparing Pay Bonanza This Year: Study”
Reuters, November 3, 2009
November 4th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Wow, those guys are really the smartest crooks in the universe!
November 9th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Thanks for the comment Einstein. Later today I will be posting a piece about Gerald Celente, in which he claims that Wall Street has “hijacked” Washington.