What Up?! Bank Bonuses for 2009!

On the same day we learned of the bleak June jobs report, with its grim news of nearly a half million lost jobs, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the firms on Wall Street are on track for one of the biggest bonus payouts ever.

2009 has been particularly good for Goldman Sachs, the Journal reports:

"Based on analysts' earnings forecasts for 2009, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is on track to pay out as much as $20 billion this year, or about $700,000 per employee. That would be nearly double the firm's $363,000 average last year, and slightly higher than the $661,000 for the average Goldman employee in fiscal 2007, according to analyst estimates reviewed by The Wall Street Journal."

Ahh, the riches that come from having friends in high places! What good would Paulson’s TARP have been if it hadn’t been profitable for his friends and former colleagues at Goldman? He cleared out its competitors, fed it TARP money directly and indirectly through AIG.

They’re well fed, those Goldman guys. In a community that eats what they kill, they’ve feasted extraordinarily well at the banquet known to the rest of us as The Crash…

But there is a stench to the meal that just doesn’t seem right.

If only we all had some friends like Henry Paulson looking out for our interests, instead of the interests of Wall Street. Perhaps then the bonuses expected by bankers would not seem so wildly out of balance with the economic conditions afflicting the rest of the country....

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

All Together Now! (A look at new millennial globalization at work...)

The Mysterious Madness of Medical Billing...

DUH!!!