Wall Street bankers paid themselves $20 billion in payroll bonuses amidst economic fall out.
New York, NY (JusticeNewsFlash.com)–Last week ended with American companies reporting over 65,000 job cuts and layoffs. President Obama met with the Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, in the Oval Office last Thursday. President Obama addressed the insanity of financial excesses executives, of major banks and financial institutions, have taken to line their own pockets in the past year while the entire U.S. financial structure and banking system was coming apart at the seams.
As American taxpayers’ dollars were bailing out Wall Street and bank executives, apparently, the corporate leaders, of these faltering financial institutions, felt it necessary to bonus themselves nearly $20 billion. The United States government has appropriated a $700 billion bailout fund which half has already been spent. United States taxpayers are left wondering how $20 billion of the $350 billion emergency relief money was used to award Wall Street executives payroll bonuses.
President Obama announced the $20 billion in bonuses was “shameful”. The NY Times reported America’s new leader was reacting to a report, by the New York State comptroller, which estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses to financial executives for 2008 were paid out. These figures were less than the previous few years bonuses, but the same as bonuses paid in 2004 when the U.S. economy was flourishing. The bailout fund is known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and so far has done nothing to control large executive payouts while American workers continue to lose their jobs.
Public outrage is demanding law makers take action. Former Merrill Lynch executive John A. Thain’s excessive spending to renovate his office last year continues to bring distaste to the entire American work force. Reports continue to surface Thain used the faltering company’s money to buy an $87,000 area rug and $35,000 commode (politically correct term for non-functioning crapper). Thain was recently forced out of his position at Bank of America.
Just this week executives at Citigroup, who have received large sums of U.S. taxpayers’ money through TARP, had to be strongly told, by the Obama administration, to cancel their order to buy a $50 million corporate jet.
Tension among U.S. Consumers continues to grow as American workers continue to lose their jobs, homes and automobiles. Hard earned taxpayers’ dollars are being flushed down the toilet by the U.S. Treasury issuing checks under the idea of last year’s “economic stimulus package”. Some how U.S. taxpayers’ dollars are making its way through the TARP sewage system and into the pockets of the very corporate executives who are laying off workers and are being accused of getting us in this mess from the start.
JusticeNewsFlash.com legal news reporter H.L. Ryan for New York employment law attorneys.