4,793—that’s the number of Wall Street bankers and brokers who received bonuses last year of at least $1 million. One would think that with the tough economic times of last year there would be almost no bonuses. What’s more, one would think that Wall Street should have realized that the payments they were making were not giving them the return they wanted.
Citigroup paid bonuses to 738 employees of $1 million or more, even though the bank reported a $27.7 billion loss and received $45 billion in bailout cash. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch paid $838 million plus bonuses last year and also received $45 billion in bailout cash.
The list goes on. Goldman Sachs has 953 bankers who were paid $1 million or more and Morgan Stanley had 428. JPMorgan Chase paid out a whopping 1,626 bank bonuses of $1 million or more. With these banks posting modest profits or losses, why exactly are there so many big bonuses to give?
Do the brokers and bankers who receive these bonuses feel they deserve them? How do the companies themselves feel that these bankers have deserved these bonuses? How is it that a company that has been close to the point of bankruptcy gives even a single $1 million bonus?
These are the questions most Americans don’t know the answers to. With unemployment rates at the highest level in a decade, there is a sense that perhaps the big US banks should tighten their belts a bit more than they have. Especially those who are taking money from all of us to help them through this tough economic time.