In today’s article we include a picture of mirror, because the stupid person here is us — you and me and all the American citizens.

In December our government passed a $700 billion package to use taxpayer funds to bail out the banking industry.  So far over $350 billion has been spent with pretty much nothing to show for it.  The credit markets remain frozen, the stock market had its worst January in history, and new jobless claims reached an all-time high.

But while we lose our jobs, say goodbye to our retirement funds, and struggle to make ends meet, the top officers in the banks that received our bailout money continued to haul in obscene salaries and bonuses.  That’s right, the people who helped collapse our economy because of their greed and irresponsibility were rewarded with riches beyond belief for their poor performance.

An article by CNN Money shows the compensation in 2007 for officers of the 9 banks that received the first batch of government aid through the TARP program:

The second column shows the average compensation (salary, bonuses and other perks) of the company’s officers listed in the CNN Money report.  The third column shows the total compensation for the officer (typically the bank’s CEO) who received the most.

This is America, and I’m all for wealth and riches going to those who achieve success.  But to receive such outlandish compensation for delivering ruin on a global scale?  That’s typically reserved for brutal dictators of third-world countries.  And yet we didn’t blink an eye while mortgaging our children’s future to bail out these millionaire crooks and losers.

Shame on us.  And shame on our U.S. Congress.

Check out more stupid stuff at Stupid-Is-As-Stupid-Does.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Finance, Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.