Obama's Biting Rebuke of Wall Street

"These were, to put it mildly, strong words from a U.S. President, and a clear signal that he appears ready to use his bully pulpit, and his executive powers, in a way the previous occupant of the White House did not: He will publically shame his own countrymen when they appear to abuse the public trust."
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Micheal Scherer is getting it.
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Mike, how long do you think it will take before those FOX-addled brains see the light?

Once again, there is no shaming these people. Holding a press conference or writing an article will not make them change their ways. You drive your multi-billion company into the ground and then come groveling to the tax payer to save your company? First of all the people that did the driving need to lose their jobs. And not just a token CEO here and there. The decisions that led to this catastrophe were years in the making and many people (including those in government) played a part.
Next any bailout money used to purchase a 5th corporate jet, spa treatments, pay out multi-million dollar executive bonuses or to stencil the CEO's wall with golden puff the magic dragon applique should require that the entire amount of bailout money be given back asap. Further that company should be barred from receiving any bailout money for at least the next 20 years.
Again, just my two cents.

He will publically shame his own countrymen when they appear to abuse the public trust.
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In other words, he's going to do YOUR job.

"That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," he said about the payouts. "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."
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So, Obama follows up his $700B blow job of Wall Street with a little light S&M?
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Please, Obama, not the dreaded "strongly worded letter"!

And he needs to send that same message to congress. Now is not the time to be an obstructionst because you want to see a president from the opposing party to fail on marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. If you oppose something the president proposed because you truly believe it would not be good for the country than fine state solid reasons for opposing it and offer realistic counter proposals.
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And the same should go for members of his own party, but he should add that now is not to time to load up needed legislation with unneeded pet projects. Put in projects that will help the American people and not soley help you get reelected.
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Lets get the country on the road to recovery. There will be time for politics. Now is not that time.

@ Paul -
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Obama will not only do Mikey's job for him, he will do it better, and still have time for a pickup basketball game before dinner.
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Awesome.

Then, after lunch, he welcomed the new National Tax Cheat, er, Czar with a rousing game of Magic 8 Ball.

As a liberal who is disgusted by the actions of folks like John Thain but who is also a mid-level manager at a Wall Street firm, I think we have to be a little careful about the number published by the NY Times. I read the article and I don't see any breakdown regarding how much of this $18.4B in bonus money went to top-level executives who a) are already rolling in the dough and b) may be in part responsible for the mess we're in right now. I have no sympathy for people like that and if they took exorbitant bonuses this year, shame on them.
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But as anybody who has worked on Wall Street knows, once you reach a certain level - and we're not talking about a very high level...say, for example, junior associate - a decent chunk of what you would consider your income comes via bonus. No, these bonuses aren't guaranteed, but in good or even fair economic environments, they usually remain stable and, in better times, can even go up a bit. They aren't really merit based except in the sense that if you are an exceptional performer (at my firm, only 10% of the folks working here get that designation...and it's the same at many firms), you might get a bit more based on your annual review. But for lower level, salaried employees, these "bonuses" are something you depend on each year. (kind of like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation)
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In 2008, my company's (since departed) CEO did not get a bonus. Most other employees saw their bonuses cut significantly. My own bonus - and I am solidly middle class, live in a modest home, have 1 car (a Honda CRV), don't spend a lot of luxury items, etc - was cut by about 35%. It's hurting our family but it was also not unexpected and it's also understandable - hey, at least I'm still employed. Some people weren't as lucky.
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So, before we go through a wholesale demonization of the folks who got these bonus dollars, let's first figure out who got them and how much less it was than last year's bonus. The Times notes that bonus dollars for Wall St. were down 44% from last year. That's a lot. There are no excuses for failed CEOs and other senior execs who received big bonuses for running their firms into the ground. But a large number of the folks who got part of the $18.4B dollars may be schlubs like me - junior associates, mid-level managers, etc - who actually made considerably less last year than they did in 2007 and who, like me, are making considerably less than they were five years ago if you account for inflation.

Touche, Paul Dirks. Though, fair's fair. MS did write about corporate exec excesses before.

As for Obama's message: Hallelujah. He just said what small investors, retirees and the working poor have been saying for months.

hulu:
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Stuff it!
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BTW, FYI:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/29/hulu-translates-to-cease-and-desist-in-swahili-oh-the-irony/
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I like it, however, 'cause if you combine them all together the collective meaning is:
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Cease grabbing your great old hairy butt, lest there be thunder upstream!

Dear Mr. President. You appear a little lost in the world. Let me clue you in.
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Some people will take as much money as they can possibly get their hands on. They will NEVER stop. They will NEVER feel shame. NEVER feel remorse. And NEVER feel responsibility for screwing over anybody else. Indeed, the have no responsibility unless the government tells them they do, upon threat of criminal prosecution.
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The job of government is not to get into "conversations" with such people. It is to protect the rest of us from them.
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John Thain goes after money, and will continue to go after money, like a serial pedophile goes after 10-year-old boys. Your only options are lengthy prison terms or strict oversight.

What 53_3 said.

Wednesday: Obama surrounds himself with corporate CEO's (that gave to his tainted internationalist campaign).

Thursday: Wag The Dog, er, finger at different peas in the same pod.

Friday: Surrender to Iran.

Saturday: Name the Gaza Strip the 58th state.

Sunday: Skip church, again. Go jogging instead. Watch blue state Steelers lose to the McCardinals.

Monday: Blame Bush for breakfast.

Tuesday: Offer Pockeestahn the carrot of unlimited USO floor shows featuring Ellen Degenerate and Cher, if they dis-arm their 80% Taliban.

Wednesday: Nuke Alaska.

Thursday next: After reading another good idea in Mother Jones, invoke executive order that all rural skoo busses will hereinafter be run on hemp oil alone, or the first born of every Republican household will be forced to watch Bill Moyers's kid go through rehab again on the PBS Frothline taxpayer dime so help me Allah.

Friday next: Unionize the Coast Guard, Marines, and 82nd Airborne, as punishment to Blackwater (for defending Americans).

Saturday next: Golf shirtless at the Army-Navy Club just to show those D.C. wimps what a Chicago-Hawaiian-Indonesia-Kenyan is made of.

Sunday again: What's this church thing you speak of?

Monday III...

ogliberal makes a very good point. Most of the people on Wall Street even at the lowest levels get bonuses and count them as a major part of their salary. However, another thing to consider is that this is the way Wall Street chooses to pay its employees low salaries and count on getting a bonus to make up. This is not the tax payers problem though. I'm not trying to be heartless, but its not.

"This is not the tax payers problem though. I'm not trying to be heartless, but its not."
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I would have been a lot less critical than I have if these bonuses were paid exclusively to the lower ranks.
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Unfortuntaly, it wasn't to be...

53:

You IS Jihad Joke Klein's skinny wiener.

Ahyuh, ahyuh, ahyuh (laughing like a Republicker) and pointing...

sqr1 is right! Obama's response is definitely analagous to those Democrat "strongly worded letters." This bailout allows these bankers to do pretty much whatever they want with this money... spend it on cool airplanes, lavish retreats, million-dollar bonuses... even light the whole pile on fire (H/T Atrios). There's not much we poor saps (or Obama) can do about that now, is there?

@gysgt213

That is true - our firms could give us hire salaries and smaller bonuses. I wish they would. I'm sure the mix they choose to give us somehow is beneficial to them from an accounting/tax perspective. Plus, in times like these, it makes it easier for them to give us less. (of course, giving us less may also help to reduce the number of layoffs) But it still really hurts folks like me, especially since my salary and bonus have stayed pretty much the same for the past 6-years and haven't even kept up with inflation, despite getting very good performance reviews each year. If I had received no bonus this year, my wife - who now stays home full time with our 2-year-old and 1-year-old - would have had to get a job. But where? And even if she did get one, she'd have to make a decent chunk of change just to be able to pay for full-time day care for our two kids. In the end, we'd be lucky to break even. And we aren't even saddled with debt - we've been very responsible over the past 5 years because we knew this day was coming. (even though a lot of so-called experts and politicians seemed to think it would last forever - or at least that's what they wanted us to believe)
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The NY Times also didn't break dollars out to show how much were distributed by firm's who received federal bailout money and those who didn't. My firm received no bailout money and almost certainly never will. Our former-CEO didn't take his bonus last year and other senior execs voluntarily either refused or allowed their bonus to be drastically reduced. So the bonus I received this year - the one that was 35% smaller than the one I got in 2007 (or 2004, for that matter) didn't tap in to taxpayer dollars at all.
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Again, there is plenty of inexcusable stuff people in my industry do for which they should be taken to the woodshed. But the NY Times story doesn't provide a complete picture of where these dollars went. Some may have went into John Thain's vacation home. But a large chunk probably went to people like me.

hulu:
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Bite this, and stop grabbing your great old hairy butt while you're at it:
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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/29/mcconnell-warns-of-grim-gop-future/?eref=politicalflipper
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Even he can see what I see in you...

Actions speak louder than words. I'll be impressed when Obama and my fellow Democrats try to claw back the last several years' worth of fraudulently obtained bonuses (and, most especially, the bonuses paid by banks in which we taxpayers had pumped cash in order to bolster their capital reserves); put realistic caps on the tax-deductibility of executive compensation, hold management accountable and stop the revolving door between the SEC/FDIC and the banks and securities firms which they supposedly regulate. Until then, talk is cheap.

Does anyone seriously expect bankers and other “Davos Men” to change their ways when there is no penalty for making outrageously reckless gambles with other peoples' money? Realistically, I think most of us would be happy to trade a little bit of “shaming” for, say, $15 million in annual salary + perks like private jets + $25 or $50 million in bonuses. I know I would.

“Biting rebuke!” Bite me!

But as anybody who has worked on Wall Street knows, once you reach a certain level - and we're not talking about a very high level...say, for example, junior associate - a decent chunk of what you would consider your income comes via bonus. No, these bonuses aren't guaranteed, but in good or even fair economic environments, they usually remain stable and, in better times, can even go up a bit. They aren't really merit based except in the sense that if you are an exceptional performer (at my firm, only 10% of the folks working here get that designation...and it's the same at many firms), you might get a bit more based on your annual review. But for lower level, salaried employees, these "bonuses" are something you depend on each year.
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thank you ogliberal, for pointing out the obvious -- that compensation in financial firms is "salary plus bonus", and that when employees take the job, they do so with the expectation that the bonus will be forthcoming if they do their jobs.
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Obama's message is pretty much pure demagoguery in light of the actual facts -- the equivalent of Boehner's "$600 million for condoms" approach to public policy. The problem here is with over-compensation of the financial industry in general (the average bonus was still over $112,000) and that is the result of the structural flaws that resulted in the meltdown. Making it about "bonuses" misses the point entirely.

"Actions speak louder than words. I'll be impressed when Obama and my fellow ... supposedly regulate. Until then, talk is cheap."
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It probably is, but what you propose is more like trying to trap smoke in a bottle.
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The 7.2 Godzillion dollars the GOP handed out is gone, and Paulson and Bernanke were not required to account for any of it.

ogliberal makes a very good point. Most of the people on Wall Street even at the lowest levels get bonuses and count them as a major part of their salary. However, another thing to consider is that this is the way Wall Street chooses to pay its employees low salaries and count on getting a bonus to make up.
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I guess it is comparable to servers in restaurants being paid low salaries and being expected to make enough in tips to earn a decent living.
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Obviously that structure won't change overnight, but they should be required to show the salary and bonuses of all officers and top management.