Ethics of Paying Bonuses to the Bankrupt Company Executives

I think everyone agrees on one thing; greed has been running rampant through the last few years of corporate structuring and the government has not been overseeing or involved at all while the business executives and sharp tongue lawyers, etc. have figured out ways to "get around" even the slimiest of contracts and agreements. We all just figured that fairness would prevail somehow if the "system" was ever to really crash; that we would all be taken care of justly and evenly. Well, that is not what is happening and we are all stunned and amazed how quickly we are no longer "protected" by an overseeing agency in the sky or in Washington for that matter.

The biggest problem was that it was all a big secret. No one ever thought that if a corporation or company went bankrupt that there would be any legal way for the executives to get bonuses. That was just too ludicrous to imagine; there are laws that would protect us against that, well, maybe not. For every law there is someone equally trying to figure out how they can break it; and that is what we are finding out, they cracked the code, they figured out how to get around the rules and regulations. These maneuvers may be not ethical, but we are finding out that they are legal none the less.

At this point, yes, some of these bonuses have already been contractually pre-written to have been paid out even in the case of bankruptcy; before any other debtors, so ethically these bonuses were a part of someone's contract and the corporations and overseeing bankruptcy agencies must follow by law what was already signed and sealed as a contract to be abided by. The problem with the justice of it all is that while some other entities that are getting screwed royally in the bankruptcy are not being paid a dime; there are of course millions of dollars that are contractually owed to these executives first. So, ethically, it is one hundred percent wrong in my book; I just want to see the slick lawyers work on the ethical side and figure out a way of getting the contract voided instead of carried through in ignorance and greed.

The only good thing I see in all of this misery and tough growth we are going through; is that these "ugly truths" and some other unethical practices are finally out in the light, in the public forums, in the media, in the town halls and in the "new corporate structures" we must submit to in order to keep this from happening again.