This will separate the wheat from the chaff. The bonus culture really needs those bonuses. While simply removing the stimulus doesn't help a lot of things, it could this. If those aren't the contingencies that can be reinforced, then new ones will be. Nothing could be worse. Maybe boards will get some backbone if they're publicly outed like this The ones that vote those bonuses have a big, cushy, stake too. They serve on many boards and rely on their reputation as being part of the board culture du jour. If irresponsible bonus awards become poor management overnight, they will change overnight.

Yeah, it's kind of a lame thought. I really don't know why I constantly see hope in this wasteland. By the time this goes up, it'll probably be out of the bill.

The bank bailout was a bad idea. But once we decided to buy $274 billion of non-voting preferred stock which pays a 5% dividend (which the Treasury borrows from the Chinese at less than 3%), I'm not sure how accelerating the repayment of $3.2 billion accomplishes anything.

Why weren't any string attached when the funds were originally released?

Is Mr. Wyden and his political cohorts always this sloppy with attention to detail when dispensing $270 billion dollars in the form of a blank check?

This sure seems like a lot of CYA on the part of Wyden and the Democrats.

Is there any logic to the $100K amount of a bonus that is OK? What backs up this number? Why not just make it a zero bonus? Why not maket it a $200K bonus? What is the significance of $100K Mr. Wyden?

Peter DeFazio was on Hartmann today and mentioned a little provision in the TARP bill that allows Congress to get the bonuses back. Anybody catch that? I did a quick google and didn't find anything.

Scott J -- Wyden had the good sense to vote against TARP specifically because the Bush bailout had no strings and no taxpayer protections. And now he is trying to get some of that money back, that he voted against giving to your Wall Street buddies in the first place. So what's your point?

So what's the big deal about Wall Street executives getting billions of dollars as bonuses for running their corporations and the American economy into the pits? Hey, we are living in Uncle Sam's Wonderland where up is down, and all men are created equal except for the one percent that is more equal than others. It has been blatantly obvious from the time Paulson and Bernanke presented their three-page scheme to funnel a fortune into Wall Street with the complicity of Congress that the fix was in and the people would be screwed. Are you impressed with the angry comments directed by politicians in Congress at Wall Street executives? Then you must not be paying attention to the fact that this is all show and they will be sucking up to Wall Street lobbyists for more campaign donations tomorrow.

And who are the "authorities" the people are listening to for economic analysis? Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and a bunch of politicians who change their positions according to which way the wind is blowing. Forget what Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, two Nobel Prize winners in economics have to say. What do they know?

We tout our Constitution as the foundation of our democracy while politicians shred it whenever it suits them and we re-elect them every time they run. Almost every politician and the people who re-elect them have rendered the Pledge of Allegiance into an act of national hypocrisy. The Bush Administration lied to promote a war on Iraq that has cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives and is estimated to eventually cost between two and three trillion (that's TRILLION) dollars, and the American people were gullible enough to buy into that crap despite an abundance of evidence encouraging, at an absolute minimum, skepticism. That war on Iraq taught us a lesson if we were paying attention, but our new leaders and the 70-80 percent of the people approving of Obama are prepared to accept another war in Afghanistan that will make Iraq look like a skirmish in a paint ball jungle. Israel's fascist and racist leaders committed 22 days of war crimes in Gaza and all but a handful of people in Congress cheered them on.

So what's the big deal if the economy is going down the tubes? Oh, that's right. We the people will be on the receiving end for a change and an overdue and rude awakening.

Posted by: Scott J | Feb 11, 2009 3:35:09 PM

Why weren't any string attached when the funds were originally released?

Is Mr. Wyden and his political cohorts always this sloppy with attention to detail

No sloppier than not knowing the diff between this Congress and the last!

Why weren't any string attached when the funds were originally released?

Because...

It's easy to express outrage, but it is impossible to say that X dollars from TARP went directly to Y bonuses.

and

the diff between this Congress and the last

Hmmm. Looks more like a ransom note than a posting.

Let's cut open all the fat cats' bellies and feed the steaks to the poor!

Mmmmmm: nothing like well marbled investment bankers roasted over a smoky applewood fire. Tastes like...victory.

And those who want "strings" attached, what strings? How much do you want the government really running private enterprise?

It looks like Wall Street and the rest of corporate America were all in favor of the government resuscitating private enterprise that can claim at least half of the credit for this current economic mess. Perhaps, we can give almost all of the credit to private enterprise when you figure they paid to re-elect their whores in Congress. The government won't be running private enterprise. It is and will be Wall Street's consiglieri in the Treasury Department greasing the wheels with the people's money.

How about a clawback on some of the millions that Tom "not-a-lobbyist" Daschle earned since he got tossed out on his ass?

Why weren't any string attached when the funds were originally released?

Because Paulson, Bernanke, and the committees run by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were doing what Wall Street wanted them to do.

And, it won't make any difference under an Obama administration. He was funded in great part by Wall Street and will be like all other politicians - do what he was paid to do.

How much do you want the government really running private enterprise?

What difference does it make if private enterprise corporations own the government?

Posted by: paul g. | Feb 11, 2009 5:23:35 PM

Banker A works in the currency division and earns the bank $100. His salary is dependent on bonuses and typically he'd get 10%, or $10.

Banker B works in the subprime mortgage division and loses the bank $500.

Now, should banker A get a bonus?

And those who want "strings" attached, what strings? How much do you want the government really running private enterprise?

It's easy to express outrage, but it is impossible to say that X dollars from TARP went directly to Y bonuses.

Do marketers get paid a bonus based on how much product they move? I've never heard of it. You get rewarded for closing the deal. The guy at the end of the line pays. I work for the company that does 90% of the long, rectangular ads you see in the sidebar. You know, the ones with someone dancing because they can get a better mortgage or auto insurance? We only care about sales because it sells ads. Once the ad is sold, we don't know or care what it sells. Our bonuses are paid based on getting it on the page.

You don't get paid for what you earn, you get paid for what you can lock people into. Based on that, the Republican strategy has been, objectively, brilliant. Clinton balanced the budget. W had a choice. W and Dick made sure that won't happen again, and they succeeded. Now, you don't have a choice, and never will again. That's closing the deal. Ditto the bankers. They should get style points for pulling it off. Just in: unemployment benefits will remain taxed under the Senate version of the stimulus package, version hammered out today. When the deal's closed, you start squeezing and the mark pays up.

Jamais, it's been two months of it, so I have to say it, I've really enjoyed your sentiments!

This is the predictable outcome of a broken social contract. We should be feasting on their f***ing livers.

With a not very nice TJ Swan.

The payback should be with interest. Go for it Senator Wyden!

The Recovery Plan From Hell:

"The first question to ask about the Recovery Program is, 'recovery for whom?' The answer is, for the people who design the Recovery Program and their constituency, the bank lobby."

The claim that Obama supports the same financial industry insiders that Bush did because he was paid for it through campaign donations is only a sliver of the truth. Obama supports the same financial industry insiders that Bush did because he is ideologically predisposed to support them. Ditto his foreign policy.

Bill Bodden wrote: [Obama] was funded in great part by Wall Street...

Got a source for that claim, Bill?

I should have said, "... in significant or more effective part" instead of "great" which allows for a sense of volume that I didn't intend.

My source was Open Secrets dot org where the numbers are:

Goldman Sachs - $955,223 Harvard University - $779,460 (former employer of Larry Summers) JPMorgan Chase & Co - $642,958 Citigroup Inc - $633,418 (Chairman Robert Rubin) UBS AG - $505,017 Morgan Stanley -$483,523

I submit that a chairman or other high executive from any corporation giving $500K or more will much more easily get the ear of a president than a small group from 5,000 people donating a hundred bucks a piece.

This should be more than abundantly clear with Obama's support for the first version of the bailout plan launched by former Goldman Sachs boss Henry Paulson. That's the one that gave away $350 billion without so much as a thread attached, never mind a string.

And who are Obama's top three economic gurus? Rubin, Summers and Rubin protege Geithner. Nowhere is there the trace of someone such as a Joseph Stiglitz or a Dean Baker who would have more likely been the people's choice.

Change? What change?

I submit that a chairman or other high executive from any corporation giving $500K or more will much more easily get the ear of a president than a small group from 5,000 people donating a hundred bucks a piece.

That is particularly true when those thousands of ordinary people are not organized cohesively.

Obama and Liberals: A Counter-Productive Relationship

I suppose that next you're going to want appraisers to pay back the amount they added to each turn-around sale, during the last decade? That home value appreciation that you take for granted when you sell, is the realtor's and the mortgage companies bonus. Your home didn't appreciate for real, we make it appreciate. That's the same job investment bankers do. Bottom line is, you owe us our cut. You forget when you talk about those sub-prime loans and how it's all about the banks, that we had to get you a nice fat appraisal value before you could get that second mortgage.

This has also been a boon to city government. By the numbers, all your good liberal projects are funded by real estate transfers and property taxes, and if you think your property has objective value anywhere near its market appraisal, I've got some real estate you'll like in Eastern Oregon.

My husband is a hedge fund manager and a meteorologist for an online observatory. On top of that, we live most the time in San Fran, and visit Oregon to spend time at one of our luxury properties, so we know what's going on around the West Coast. The 14% of the total bonus payout that the Wyden bill would claw back is viewed as a tax. It's not a bad deal to pay 14% on a windfall bonus. Liberals blamed most of Bush economics on Christian evangelicals and their thinking. This proves that you were simply looking for reasons to insult us. Washington is full of heathens now, look at what's in the White House, and you're getting the same bottom line with these bonuses. Is it sinking in?

A snippet from Bill B's link to the Greenwald article:

"...what exists of a popular left is either incapable of action or in Obama's pocket...

<h2>"Hordes of Obama-loving liberals are still marching around paying homage to the empty mantras of 'pragmatism' and 'post-partisan harmony' -- the terms used to justify and even glorify Obama's repudiation of their own political values."</h2>