Wall Street’s bailout bonuses
Was $18 billion in bonus pay ‘shameful’ or fair compensation?
Wall Street gave out $18.4 billion in bonuses last year, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial, and that “boneheaded, tone-deaf” decision came after top financial firms asked for, and got, hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to save them from their own actions. The banks justify bonuses, which average $112,000, by saying without them, they’d lose their best employees. “To which we respond: Oh, please.”
Okay, so some Wall Street executives have a “political tin ear,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. But these firms really can't afford to let their most “talented financial minds” get snapped up by rivals. President Obama called the bonuses "shameful," but scapegoating capitalists is no way to fix the economy.
Sorry, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, but taxpayers are the biggest shareholders in many of these financial firms now, and they've had it with these “corporate welfare queens.” Anybody who doled out big bonuses after receiving bailout money should be fired, and should pay back their ill-gotten gains.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Book reviews: 'Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves' and 'Notes to John'
Feature The aughts' toxic pop culture and Joan Didion's most private pages
-
The FDA plans to embrace AI agencywide
In the Spotlight Rumors are swirling about a bespoke AI chatbot being developed for the FDA by OpenAI
-
Digital consent: Law targets deepfake and revenge porn
Feature The Senate has passed a new bill that will make it a crime to share explicit AI-generated images of minors and adults without consent