Bank Bailouts: Wall Street CEOS and Bankers Are Sill Living it Up

Recently while reading the 2009 AARP monthly bulletin, I came across the following information in regards to the bank bailouts and how the CEOS of those institutions are frivolously spending the taxpayers hard earned money. Many Wall Street CEOS as well as the CEOS of banks are still living it up and doing this with our hard earned dollars.

When retirement savings vanished that totaled a whopping $2.8 trillion and then when another $400 billion in taxpayer financed loans were sent to bail out the banks that were in trouble, many of the CEOS from those banks as well as the Wall Street CEOS decided to present themselves bonuses that came to a total of around $18.4 billion even after knowing the stipulations on how the bailout money was to be spent.

The former boss of Merrill Lynch, John Thain used $1.2 million of the bailout money to purchase items that would" brighten" up his Manhattan office. One of those items was a toilet on legs which cost $35,000! Just this past January of 2009, Thain had stated that his firm had lost $27 billion and at this time, Bank of America took over and granted them a $20 billion loan from the federal government. There is one thing that John Thain somehow forgot to mention during his announcement stating that his firm had lost billions of dollars was the fact that the top executives of Merrill Lynch all received bonuses of $3.6 billion and this did include giving each of the firms 39,00 employees a bonus of $1 million each!

There was much anger around the world about the bank bailouts and about all of the frivolous spendages going on even when stipulations were put on receiving the loan. One of the banks who received a bailout loan was Citibank and the tongue-lashing that Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit received from Washington last month from angry lawmakers and Rep. Michael Capuano was one of those lawmakers who were angry about all the frivolous spending seemed to have worked because Pandit said until his bank makes a profit his salary would be only $1.00. Citibank CEOS have also cancelled the publicized purchase of their $50 million 12-seat private jet.

AIG is receiving their 3^rd government bailout after stating that they had a four-quarter loss of $61.7 billion. The government bailout amount this time will be $30 billion & President Barack Obama has proposed placing a $500,000 cap on the salaries of the CEOS that are aided under the Troubled Asset relief Program. Just this past week, several AIG employees gave their bonuses back and CEO Edward Liddy has asked others to do the same and while speaking under oath in front of Congress last week, Edward announced that they would be giving back the bonuses they received from the bailout money because of how angry Americans have become because of the ways the bailout money is being spent on frivolous things.

This is just a small example of where our hard earned money as taxpayers is going! Most of us live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to go spend $35,000 on a freakin' toilet. Something is very wrong with this picture folks! President Barack Obama keeps talking and saying that it is time America has a change but I have not seen any change yet. I just hear about all of the CEOS of banks and the Wall Street gurus spending our hard earned money and they know about the stipulations that go along with receiving that bail out money, but they still continue on with their frivolous spending.

Sources: 2009 AARP Monthly Bulletin