Obama Slams Wall Street For Rich Executive Bonuses

[HARDCORE]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090130/.../obama_bonuses

Obama slams Wall Street for rich executive bonuses

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, who has ordered a pay freeze on six-figure White House aides, wants to talk to Wall Street executives about a report indicating payments of over $18 billion in bonuses as the economy was in virtual free fall.

"It is shameful," Obama said from the Oval Office Thursday. "And part of what we're going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility."

The president's comments, made with new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side, came in swift response to a New York state comptroller's report saying that employees of the New York financial world garnered an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses last year.

Obama's harsh criticism of Wall Street came just one day after he brought several well-paid chief executives to the White House and praised them for being on the "front lines in seeing the enormous problems in our economy right now."

By sunset Thursday, he was serving notice that both he and Geithner will speak directly to Wall Street leaders about government bailouts, extravagant executive perks and a public revulsion over a perceived me-first attitude in executive suites.

The corporate leaders who appeared with Obama Wednesday are not from the Wall Street financial companies that the president targeted, but rather are the heads of such well-known manufacturing and technology giants as IBM, Motorola, Xerox and Corning. Still, they get paid handsomely.

Most of those who stood with Obama earned a total 2007 compensation package of between $8 million and $21 million, according to a review by The Associated Press. Those calculations include the executives' salary, bonus pay, incentives, perks, the estimated value of stock holdings and other compensation.

Obama called the payment of the Wall Street bonuses "the height of irresponsibility," and said the public dislikes the idea of helping the financial sector dig out of a hole, only to see it get bigger because of lavish spending. The comptroller's report found such bonuses were down 44 percent, but at about the same level they were during the boom time of 2004.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke even more bluntly.

"I'd like to throw these guys in the brig," Biden said in an interview with CNBC.

[HARDCORE]

Mr. President

Vice President Biden said that the Wall Street Executives who collected Billions in Bonuses should be in the Brig. Might I suggest that the Brig be aboard the Titanic!!!! With people literally starving, this is criminal. The name "Marie Antoinette" definitely come to mind?

VERITAS [TRUTH]

[reconeil]

GOOD FOR HIM!!!,...and all other show-biz types solely good at words & typically quite poor
in substance & sensible resolutions of ANYTHING in general .

Still, wish someone could sensibly explain to all We Americans how shovelling MORE & MORE
of MY/YOUR/OUR and/or Taxpayer Monies down a historically proved: "Fat Cat" or Government
& Corporate with Best Lobbyists SINK HOLE,...could possibly turn The Economy around?

Sure, all such squandering will no doubt work quite well FOR Big Brother Government & all
affiliated & daily beholding to same, and many also Wealthy Corporate: "Fat Cats" with Good
Lobbyists, as previously alluded to.

Still, Rick. Whom-in-the-hell are looking-out for welfare of the rest of: "We The (Schnooks)"
and/or the quite overwhelming vast majority of The Private Sector?
George Washington's or Ronald Reagan's ghost?

Neil

[revwardoc]

Joe Biden would like to throw those guys in the brig; Well, Joe, DO IT! What they did was nothing more than insider trading, fraud, and grand theft at its worst. So many Americans (except illegal aliens) have lost their homes and jobs and the Wall St fat cats are smoking their Cuban cigars and counting the money in their offshore accounts.

[SuperScout]

What the Recto-Ostrich Party ( they either have their head up their ass or in the dirt) doesn't realize with all this self-righteous chest pounding is that the State of New Yawk has will lose $1 Billion in tax revenue because many New Yawk-based companies are not paying the bonuses as they once were. NYC itself will lose several hundred million in tax revenue, but Rectocrats will just rase taxes on everybody else to make up the difference.

Wall Street is getting all the blame for the current fiscal fiasco, yet the very genesis of this bed of snakes has its origins in the Community Development Act, signed into law by Slick Willie, and then in its afterbirth, the mortgages sold to undeserving, credit-challenged people. Add to this soup of deceit and delusion the ham-handed actions of people like Barney "The Fudge-Packer" Franks, and the downhill slide on the razor's edge of reality has produced this sea of red ink, which in effect, is our own blood.