Merrill Lynch pays out $4 bn in bonuses covered by TARP funds

by Uncle Bob Thu Jan 22, 2009 at 08:21:37 AM PST

After all the abuses of law, morals and ethics by the Bush administration over the last 8 years, I never thought that my outrage meter could get pegged again. Wrong.

The Financial Times reported that Merrill Lynch accelerated its normal time schedule for awarding bonuses and distributed $ 4 billion dollars on Dec 29, just 3 days before its takeover by Bank of America. At the same time Merrill posted $15 billion in losses for the fourth quarter. The total compensation for Merrill Lynch employees in 2008 was $15 billion.

That’s way more than just an outsized sense of entitlement, that’s flat-out stealing. And the money for this comes from, you guessed it, the US government. The Bank of America was prepared to back out of the deal once the size of the Merrill Lynch loss became apparent. The deal was completed only after guarantees of government money by the US Treasury.

Read on...

Any finanical types been arrested yet? Other than Madoff? Tom

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