Taxpayer Bonuses to Failed Bankers... Is Obama Serious??

Chris Dodd is s sneaky fellow. Towards the end of the stimulus package negotiations, he snuck a provision in, severely limiting bonuses for executives receiving taxpayer money through the TARP or in other ways.


Tim Geithner has filled his cabinet with ex-Wall Streeters, so he and the Treasury have been fighting, tooth and nail, against limits on executive pay, just like Paulson did. Dodd’s provision was meant to counter the Treasury.


Now Obama has sided with the Treasury, and is trying to come up with ways for taxpayer money to be paid to these executives.


On Fox News on Sunday, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said that the administration will: “seek changes in the government's approach to executive compensation”. That can only mean one thing: Obama will refuse to implement to provisions that he will sign into law on Tuesday.


Obama is prepared to break the law in order to give failed bankers million dollar bonuses paid by taxpayers! As someone who supported Obama fully, I am now left speechless, only able to say: are you serious Obama!!??


If a corporation feels like its executives deserve multi-million dollar bonuses and is willing to pay that, I have no problem with that. And if that corporation keeps paying the bonuses even in the face of multi-billion dollar losses, that is also fine with me. It’s just stupid, and I don’t understand why the shareholders accept that.


However, when the corporation receives taxpayer money, it is very much my problem how that money is being spent.


This is a really, really serious crisis. In Florida, there are actual bread lines. In Nevada and California, local governments have designated and fenced in land for people who live in their cars, reminiscent of the “Hoovervilles” of the Great Depression. Food banks are out of food in the Northeast, and the beggars in New York City are no longer mostly made up of addicts.


The President of The United States is currently weighing these problems against the need for multi-million dollar bonuses to failed bank executives. You have to ask yourself if he has lost his mind.


The heat is turning up in the battle for taxpayer money and the continued roll of Wall Street in the American economy. On outlets for Wall Street employees like CNBC and Fox News, the rhetoric is really changing dramatically.


The financial sector seems united in a battle against taxpayers, eerily reminiscent of crises in countries with financial oligarchies and mafia control like South Korea and Russia. The gloves have come off, and the financial oligarchs seem to be winning. People on these networks, such as Larry Kudlow and Charlie Gasparino, are absolutely mocking efforts to use taxpayer money to help taxpayers, as opposed to giving it to individuals on Wall Street.


For decades, The United States has been dictating what countries receiving aid from the IMF should do during bank crises. The advice has always been the same when corrupt countries have been receiving aid: fire bank executives, nationalize banks, and under no circumstances give the banks money with no strings attached.


Now, The United States is going down the very road it has warned against so many times, and the results have already proven to be disastrous. Bankers and other Wall Street executives are demanding taxpayer money while hiding even the slightest hint of the extent of their losses. They have insiders from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and many other firms in the Treasury, and they are even using TARP money to lobby for these things.


I don’t know what Obama is thinking at this time. What he’s actually doing, though, is taking food from the mouths of starving Americans and putting the money in the pockets of bank executives who have brought down the American financial system.





Moreover, I advise that the winner-takes-all voting system should be destroyed.