A Quick Question for Financial CEOs

photo credit: Tracy O

I’m not a mathematician. I admit that I completely suck at math, a big part of why my childhood dreams of becoming a programmer were dashed and I switched to writing. However, I think I spot a number issue here.

You see, many of your banks and firms have received billions of dollars in government assistance over the past few months. You say your firms needed it to stay afloat and, looking at your staggering losses, I am definitely hard pressed to disagree.

But then comes the rub, you take that money and, out of the funds, you give yourselves and other executives multi-million dollar bonuses. While I grant that it was only a percent of a percent of the bailout money spent that way, it certainly shows a lack of care and concern for saving money at a time where your companies are, supposedly, so desperate to stay alive they need government help.

This, understandably, upset the public. After all, very few taxpayers earn anywhere near the amount of money you guys do on your worst years and we aren’t getting any serious government assistance. In large part, we’re the ones financing you. So we made some noise and the government heard. President Obama signed an executive order limiting executive pay to just $500,000 and adding some additional oversight.

How do you guys respond, by trying to give the money back.

This begs a simple question. What are you guys thinking? Sure, you don’t get to keep making your multi-million dollar salaries, but you get billions of dollars in cold hard cash and you get to keep your business afloat. What is there to decide?

I have a sneaking suspicion that even laypeople are better with money than you guys and I think I can prove it pretty easily. Read more