Wall Street bonuses to rise 40%

Bonuses reflect how well management thinks of their decision choices. Bonuses reward or punish how well institutional morality is obeyed. Despite what people think about the bonuses, what we should do is take them as internal communication about what banking institutions think of themselves in terms of recent performance including the procurement of massive government bailouts.

In some ways maybe we should feel a little remorse for these poor banking employees, after all the entire bunch of them had to squeak by last year on a mere three quarters of a million dollars. That's enough to sadden anybody. Of course they had to cough up 10% into the "Get Rid Of Obama", fund effort!

Stevep1984, Wallstreet firms used to pay commissions....over the past 15 years commissions were eliminated in favor of "Bonuses" because it allowed the firms to reduce the percentage paid to employees.  So the term "Bonus" is totally misused.  Furthermore most people working for wallstreet firms do not get a Salary or the salary they get is small....meaning they depend on the year end compensation to be their actual salary.

Lease4....Unemployment is running at 10% max....maybe you didn't pay attention to your math teacher when you were in grade school.  "Most" would imply 50% or more.  The media has made this into their very own disaster scenario...puts more butts in the seats and sells more papers or gets more AD revenue.  While this recession has been difficult for many we are still thriving as a country.  Don't forget that the newspapers and news stations are just as greedy as anyone else in society (maybe more!)  A big news story gets them a lot of eyeballs.

There's no doubt that certain people did illegal things but does that mean your whole company should go down?  Ask the people at Arther Andersen or Enron if they were lazy people that never worked.  There was a handful of people that were cheating the system.  And for that tens of thousands of people lost their livelihood having to find new employment.  Not to mention it washed out everyone's retirement account.

Tinman....funny every place I have ever worked at the people talking always thought they were the most important.  It's a basic human emotion...we all think were the most important and the most indispensable.  The truth is it takes thousands of people to build great companies some are more valuable than others.

Ford & Squeaky...go to the government website and check out the status of the Bank bailout.  The are only a few firms than have not paid back the TARP money they were granted.  Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan have paid it all back and furthermore the firms that have paid the money have paid back including interest plus warrants (like stock options) that will net the US government billions of free cash (since they borrowed the money at 0% interest from the fed to lend it to the banks).

And for those of you that can't see the other rather "large" benefit from Wallstreet bonuses....consider this.  Bonuses are considered income and therefore almost impossible to hide which means they are taxed to the fullest.  This means that as most of these people are high income earners they are in the highest tax bracket which means nearly 50% of those bonuses will end up as US and State government revenue. 

You will never hear this version of the story because it wouldn't sell very well on TV.  What sells is to say everyone's misfortune is caused by a couple of fat cats on Wallstreet.  The truth is millions of people overspent on homes, cars and other things overextending their credit to the max.  Admittedly the banks should have been checking the people they gave credit to but shouldn't all the people that bought too much "home" be at fault too?  I know we've become a society that no longer takes responsibility for anything but come on!!!!

Bonuses? How dare they. Give the bail out money back you crooks!

There are so many categories of business that need a complete overhaul. Mostly banks, the workers as a whole do a good job but the management are their just for the benefits performance or not. Another entity is the U.S Post office, worked there for a few years & to say the least management & union are a complete failure if you work there don't try to improve the system as they say (rock the boat). It is not any wonder they are always in the deficit. They gave UPS & Fedex a gold mine through just mismanagement of parcel post. As you may observe our beautiful congress does a poor job also, as it stands now the two parties are failing to see the light & are failing to get the job done. All the present programs that they have & are anticipating are a complete failure. I hope that in the next election the people can see this & vote accordingly another words get the (AH's) out & hope for some form of sanity, there is just too much corruption in our government (Greed).  

I find it disappointing that when the majority of our people are either unemployed or, agreeing to furloughs, wage and benefit cuts just to stay employed that there are companies that would reward marginal performance with a bonus. Do these people live in such an isolated place that they cannot recognize the absolute arrogance of their actions?