Obama flips out over Wall Street bonuses


It takes quite a bit to make our new president angry, but a New York Times report saying that Wall Street paid $18.4 billion in bonuses last year as companies teetered on the brink of collapse did the trick.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, President Obama seemed livid at the financial services industry. He called the payouts "the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful."

Wall Street might want to forgo bonuses for everybody. That's Obama's view and it is probably shared by the majority of the American people. Vice President Joe Biden told CNBC that he wants to lock up Wall Street bad guys.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner already had to twist Citigroup Inc.'s (NYSE:C) arm to "change its mind" about buying a corporate jet. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating bonuses paid by Merrill Lynch before its acquisition by Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC). Then, of course, there are the shenanigans at American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG).




The contemptuous attitude that Wall Street has shown the taxpayers -- to whom it owes its very existence -- is nothing short of remarkable. The powers-that-be in the financial services industry should have realized that things such as junkets, corporate airplanes and bonuses would anger Obama and other prominent politicians.

They are morally wrong in the current economy and bring heaps of bad (deserved) publicity on the banks.

But they just don't seem to ever learn from their mistakes, which makes the argument for nationalizaton more compelling.

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