Will the Scrooge bankers give their bonuses to the needy Bob Cratchits?


We have a human disaster of enormous proportions. We have 15 million persons unemployed. Thousands are on the brink of losing their homes. As of this December, 1.7 million unemployed will exhaust their benefits. They may be homeless at this holiday time. Some 400,000 persons exhausted their benefits in the month of October.

Now, as reported in BusinessWeek, one lone economist, Katerina Alexandraki, is asking Wall Streeters to give their bonuses to the homeless and unemployed. She has set up a website, Bonus for Homes, and started a campaign to distribute the monies to low-income earners and the unemployed.

The Federal Reserve pledged $11.2 trillion dollars to bail out the bankers and support the financial industry, but did nothing to help the unemployed. The bankers made huge profits this year, but instead of bolstering their balance sheets they are giving out record bonuses. Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) for example, has set aside $16.7 billion dollars, or 43% of earnings, for compensation and bonuses. If you were to divide up the $16.7 billion by the 15 million unemployed, each Bob Cratchit would receive about $1,100. And that is just Goldman. Multiply this by the hundreds of Wall Street firms and hedge funds and other financial groups, and it's likely that this number could be close to $10,000 per person.

So, the challenge to the bankers and and the entire financial industry is: Give up your bonus. Help someone in need.

Do you agree that this is a good idea?

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