Bailed-out banks pay executives $1.6 billions

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Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and other benefits in the calendar year 2007, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation because of lagging performance but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for 53 of the 116 banks that have accepted tax dollars.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the bonuses simply “get them to do the jobs for which they are well-paid in the first place.”

I was reading this Associated Press article in our local paper this morning.
On average each executive received $ 2.6 millions in salaries, bonuses and
benefits.

It makes me sick just thinking about it that these bastards enrich themselves
with taxpayers money. Why isn't the US Treasury overseeing the bail-out
funds?

What do you think is going to happen with the bail-out funds to the automakers?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 10 • Views: 2,795 • Replies: 33

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The "sheeple" who vote these Congress people into office are actually at fault. The dim witted like Barney Frank, who are part of the cause, elected to give these rascals the bailout with no oversight.

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@Woiyo9,

they bought the tripe about how the government can't do anything right, thus if the taxpayers take an ownership share with the hopes of being paid back in part for the bail out then they must be silent partners. The Corporate elite take the money and then reward themselves, because they can. Nobody it seems in Washington has much of an understanding about how power works.

This idea that the corporate elite would do the right thing without power being applied to them was naive in the extreme, we are in this mess because an entire generation of corporate elite did not do the right thing.

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Part of me really hopes that the younger generation (born in the late 70's to now) rise up against the older generation who has chosen to mortgage our/my future.

I hope that when people my generation rise to power they will give a voice to the pissed off youth in this country who are now indentured servents to the retiring generation.

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@maporsche,

Quote:

Part of me really hopes that the younger generation (born in the late 70's to now) rise up against the older generation who has chosen to mortgage our/my future.

I hope that when people my generation rise to power they will give a voice to the pissed off youth in this country who are now indentured servents to the retiring generation.

we are already beginning to see the youth anger in Europe..it will happen here. America will burn soon, the 1960's riots will look tame by comparison.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

maybe not, don't forget the last generation was raised in the era of, everybody wins, you get a trophy just for showing up, they may see these rewards as the norm, i did my job, maybe not well, but where's my trophy

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It is worth pointing out that the pay and benefits referred to here by CJ were paid from the private revenues of the institutions concerned, and were not taxpayer dollars.

Conservative whiners here who talk about "sheeple," and who are eager to blame this on the Congress can show their own dedication to the principles they tout by contacting their members of Congress to make sure that taxpayers dollars aren't used for these purposes. They can raise a public stink about it, in the effort to assure that taxpayer dollars don't go for these purposes.

Of course, they could just sit around and whine about the situation, and blame it upon those whom they have identified in advance as their political enemies.

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@djjd62,

Quote:

maybe not, don't forget the last generation was raised in the era of, everybody wins, you get a trophy just for showing up, they may see these rewards as the norm, i did my job, maybe not well, but where's my trophy

Bad education can be undone, those who are economic losers know who they are. They will be even more pissed having never before considered the possibility of losing in a rigged game. The emotional and spiritual trauma will lead to violence, realizing that they have been lied to their entire lives just adds fuel to the fire.

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Whether we actually have a two-party or basically just a one-party system at present is a matter of semantics. Both the dem candidate and the pubbie candidate selected for pubbies by the MSM and liberal voters crossing party lines at primaries supported the idea of massive bailouts. All John McCain had to do to win was mouth four simple words, "I oppose the bailout"; he could have changed his mind later.

Any possible hope outside of revolution has to involve pubbies getting their own thing back together and that probably means eliminating primaries and going back to some version of smoke-filled rooms to select candidates.

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@Setanta,

First of all, you tout, be assured, the names of my US Senators and Rep is stored in my e-mail and used often.

Also, relative to CJ's remarks about compensation, since the Govt has provided no breakdown as to how the tax dollars were spent, it is fair to criticize them for providing bonus when the firm they runs loses BILLIONS of dollars.

Where is the Govt oversight we were promised by Pelosi and Reid? Maybe you have the answer, smartass.

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Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret

Dec 22, 9:52 AM (ET)

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. (RF) spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081222/D957QL7O0.html

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Quote:

"It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.

But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out.

Pressured by the Bush administration to approve the money quickly, Congress attached nearly no strings on the $700 billion bailout in October. And the Treasury Department, which doles out the money, never asked banks how it would be spent.

Quote:

Warren, the congressional watchdog appointed by Democrats, said her oversight panel will try to force the banks to say where they've spent the money.

"It would take a lot of nerve not to give answers," she said.

But Warren said she's surprised she even has to ask.

"If the appropriate restrictions were put on the money to begin with, if the appropriate transparency was in place, then we wouldn't be in a position where you're trying to call every recipient and get the basic information that should already be in public documents," she said.

Source

The bailout was definitely needed, but giving the banks carte blanche without a trace of accountability is not only irresponsible, it's downright fraudulent.
Another reminder that the Bush era has nearly destroyed the financial
welfare of many generations to come.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

The bailout was definitely needed, but giving the banks carte blanche without a trace of accountability is not only irresponsible, it's downright fraudulent.
Another reminder that the Bush era has nearly destroyed the financial
welfare of many generations to come.

I think it was needed, too, though I had some real misimpressions of what it was to be used for. Now, I'm seeing headlines about land developers trying to get their snouts into the trough. You see, I thought it was to restore faith and liquidity in the financial markets, not just any group that could show that business wasn't as good as they had hoped for. Somehow, too, I had the impression that the intent was to buy bad and questionable debt from banks and, oh yeah, investment banks. Boy, was I ever the innocent.

Hey, the oil industry has come upon hard times. You think, maybe. . . .

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You'll do anything to shift the blame. You are responsible. All these scapegoats only did your bidding. The customer is King.

Otherwise you are under a mysterious conspiracy which you can't understand.

You are denying the democratic process.

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I cannot get annoyed or upset by this state of affairs, since I "frame" such news as part and parcel of what, I believe, our democratic Republic uses instead of aristocracy and peasants. Anyone reading about this news, who is descended from aristocracy, and today is not getting his/her royal stipend, might have reason to complain. Most of the rest of us, I believe, are living way better than ancestors of only a few hundred years ago. So, in my opinion, my getting annoyed or upset would just be "sour grapes," in my mind; I led my life my way; I am not starving a la A Tale of Two Cities; I have no entitlement to great wealth; I have no entitlement to resent those that have gotten in the correct line for perquisites. Any anoyance, upsetness, resentment, jealousy would just be putting bad chemicals in my circulatory system that will only shorten my one little humble life. I choose not to rain on anyone's parade, so to speak.

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@roger,

plus no apparent purview...

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@ossobuco,

Actually, I just meant to say I'm listening to this thread.

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Foofie, as usual, hasn't understood anything nor gotten the point in all this.

Aristocracy? We're talking about bank executives here, Foofie, not aristocrats.
I wouldn't care a bit what they are and how much money they have if it weren't
for the fact that the banks those executives work for, received taxpayers money
to bail them out. I see no entitlement of exorbitant salaries, bonuses,
stock options and other benefits to executives who have over the years driven the
banks into near bankruptcy with their executive decisions.

Secondly, we agree that the bail-out needed to take place, but who in their
right mind gives billions of dollars to the banking industry without having
them hold accountable for the distribution of funds, especially after having
given such a poor track record of misusing and mishandling funds. It's
like giving little Johnny another 100 dollars after he lost the first one somewhere.

1 Reply

Well said Foofie. You only needed to go back a few decades though.

Cal- Foofie makes the main point.

You're an evolutionist as I understand it. Anti-Christian. Those people were and are perfectly entitled to what they can get under the evolutionary principles. They are our aristocracy. They lost their moral bearings and why not with all the encouragement for them to do so. In their position most of us would have done the same.

If you have "money tables" and you don't throw them over this is what you will get. Perhaps Jesus saw into the essence of money.

It is not in the least like giving little Johnny another 100 dollars after he lost the first one somewhere. There is no point of comparison.

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CJ SAYS -

Quote:

The bailout was definitely needed, but giving the banks carte blanche without a trace of accountability is not only irresponsible, it's downright fraudulent.
Another reminder that the Bush era has nearly destroyed the financial
welfare of many generations to come.

The Bush era???? Do not be so short sighted or naive to think this bullshit lack of oversight only started the day Bush got in office. It stretches over many years and the only constant is the many members of Congress who have held office during these many years.

Congress passed many regulations that reduced oversight and / or created certain investment habits. Congress pimped up Fannie and Freddie for years.

Have you written your Congressman and Senators and thanked them for putting us in this position?

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Bailed-out banks pay executives $1.6 billions

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