Apologists and defenders of those unconscionable Wall Street bonuses have mounted a counterattack in hopes public outrage won't end the gravy train for an elite few.
Bonuses that totaled nearly $20 billion at a time when Wall Street was crashing and crying for government bailouts were needed, so their argument goes, to keep good people. "Good people?" The ones that were captains of the financial world's collapse?
Another variation: Princely bonuses that would embarrass royalty were rewards for "exceptional work." "Exceptional work?" Does that mean work that resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in net losses to Wall Street's capital value?
This obscene practice of paying bonuses for incompetence must end and, indeed, can be stopped.
Virtually every major financial institution either has or will be put on life support with public funds. That means the public, through government, will have a hand in decisions on how firms are managed. In another form, these companies would be in bankruptcy and subject to the management of a bankruptcy judge.
While several million Americans who worked their fingers to the bone for their employers have been laid off because of the economic calamity sweeping the nation, it's only just that Washington overseers halt bonuses as a knee-jerk custom.
Congress and President Obama can't go soft on this issue, falling for sob stories about the hard times of multimillionaires. Probity in business must be restored.
Financial sector CEOs already are generously rewarded with top salaries and perks. As the chief executives, they're expected to work far, far beyond the norm. Why should doing their job—creating a successful company—deserve special compensation?
It doesn't. But the incestuous relationship between CEOs and their handpicked boards of yes-men directors always could be counted on for exorbitant payouts, even when companies posted huge losses.
In some blue-collar circles, workers are told their reward for top performance is to keep their job. Nothing more.
Americans deserve to know about the special beneficiaries of enormous bonuses --by name, by company and major assets they've accumulated while their companies were headed for the reefs. Some of these titans have multiple palatial homes.
The intent is to put on the record, as a first step toward reform, a measurement of the abuses involved in these bonuses—that while key executives were driving their firms into penury, they were snapping up mansions for cash. Meanwhile, millions of other Americans could not make mortgage payments.
