British political satirists John Bird and John Fortune discussed the so-called credit crunch back in October 2007.
This skit isn’t dated in the least. The biggest joke of all – failed gambler-bankers walking away with massive bonuses at the taxpayer’s expense – is still breaking news.
Here’s an extract from the report in yesterday’s Daily Mail: How bailed-out U.S. banks kept on dishing out bonuses
Nine Wall Street banks received a combined £75billion in taxpayer cash last October to help them survive the financial meltdown.
But according to a shocking report by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, bonuses paid by several of the biggest institutions were ‘substantially greater’ than the banks’ earnings.
- Goldman Sachs’s net income was £1.4billion, yet it paid out nearly £2.8billion in bonuses. It received £6 billion in bail-out funds.
- Morgan Stanley earned £1billion and paid nearly £2.7billion in bonuses. It also received £6billion from the taxpayer.
- JPMorgan Chase earned £3.3billion, paid £5.2billion in bonuses and received £15 billion from the government.
Financial professionals work in the Goldman Sachs booth on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange
Citigroup, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which all needed government funds, also paid billions to hundreds of executives despite posting massive losses.
The report claimed that America’s biggest banks awarded a total of nearly 4,800 bosses with bonuses of a million dollars or more each last year.
Mr Cuomo said his office studied historical financial filings and found that at many banks compensation increased in the 2003-2006 bull market years, but stayed at those levels as the mortgage crisis and recession hit.
‘Thus, when the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the banks did poorly, their employees were paid well.
‘And when the banks did very poorly, they were bailed out by taxpayers and their employees were still paid well,’ he said. ‘Bonuses and overall compensation did not vary significantly as profits diminished.’
