Obama: Bank execs should skip bonuses
Posted by Brad at 5:20am Wednesday, November 26, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama thinks bank executives should forgo their bonuses this year to show they are taking responsibility amid difficult economic times.
… Obama said bank executives should make sacrifices because so many other people are struggling as the U.S. economy slips further. Some financial firms, including Goldman Sachs, the Swiss bank UBS and the British bank Barclays, have said they are not handing out annual bonuses to top executives, and Obama encouraged more to follow.
“I think that if you are already worth tens of millions of dollars, and you are having to lay off workers,” Obama said, “the least you can do is say, ‘I’m willing to make some sacrifice as well, because I recognize that there are people who are a lot less well off, who are going through some pretty tough times.’”
Obama’s definitely on the right track.
On Nov 26, 2008, Otter said:
This seems like a no brainer to me. Those crackpots are already pulling in multimillion dollar salaries, they don’t need any extra. They certainly don’t deserve a bonus based on their companys performances.
On Nov 26, 2008, Brad said:
You’re absolutely right, but they’ve been rewarded in the past even when the companies performed badly. I’m just glad Obama said what the rest of us were already thinking — let’s use a little common sense with these things.
On Nov 26, 2008, Otter said:
Absolutely!
In fact, I would go so far as to ask these CEOs to take a pay cut. Although that will never happen.
On Nov 26, 2008, Brad said:
Even better… their compensation package should proportionally reflect the percentage of value the company stock has lost within the last year. Some companies’ stocks have lost half, two-thirds, three-quarters or more since the first of the year! Think of all the stockholders and retirement funds that have lost so much of their value because of these executives gross mismanagement.
Sounds fair to me!