“Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses – despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out.
The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday.
Each of the firm’s 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million.
The size of the pay pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out.
As Washington pours money into the bank, the cash will immediately be channelled to Goldman’s already well-heeled employees.”
The gall of these bankers. The world will not crumble if they get ordinary pay, yet they believe themselves above it all. Talk about inviting regulation, especially if the Democrats sweep and get the magic 60 in the Senate (odds are good they will).
I sent the article to my congresswomen and wrote the following note:
“Goldman Sachs took money from the bailout and will use it to pay bonuses. This is outrageous! You need to do something to stop this waste of our money.
It is irresponsible for businesses to pay such big bonuses, particularly when those same businesses are at such high risk of collapse and losing gobs of money. It is likewise irresponsible for our government to prop companies up that have such irresponsible pay practices.”