NYT - Bonuses Are Obscene

Money for Nothing

By DAVE KRASNE
Published: January 26, 2009

MERRILL LYNCH lost $27 billion last year, and yet still managed to rush through $4 billion worth of year-end bonuses in the days before it was taken over by Bank of America.
Because both companies have been the beneficiaries of the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, news of these bonuses was met with predictable uproar: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York threatened to investigate; any elected official with access to a microphone joined in a chorus of “shame on you”; and around every water cooler and on every cable channel, pundits offered up scathing commentaries of Wall Street greed.

Merrill Lynch is not the only irresponsible institution out there. Despite a year of record losses, despite all the taxpayer money being injected into our financial institutions, bonuses for 2008 were, in some cases, down less than 50 percent from those the previous year...

Full Article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27krasne.html?_r=1&th&emc=th