"But this year's bonus season has morphed into days of whine and poses. The Street, tin-eared, in whining about the people who are enraged by multibillion-dollar bonus pools are a time of 10% unemployment and public angst. It's trying to solve its problem by posing as a public-spirited operation (rather than Greedhead Central) by showing off charitable contributions and small-business-loan programs. That maneuver can't possibly work. ... Had the [Fed] and other central bankers not flooded the world with cheap cash, Goldman's and Morgan's counterparties--the ones on the other side of their market bets--would have failed. ... In an ideal world, this year the Street would acknowledge the public largesse by having the sense not to pay bonuses of more than six digits--hey, its worker bees need money in order to survive in the high-cost New York City area--and would like to make a nice voluntary contribution to the government that saved it. ... Washington ... whines about Wall Street and adopts symbolic poses--denunciations of 'obscene' bonuses and 'fat-cat bankers' by President Obama, for example--but doesn't do the substantive thing: breaking up those institutions so that they're not too big to be allowed to fail", Allan Sloan (AS) at Fortune, 8 February 2010.
I agree with AS and have advocated breaking up the TBTFs for years.
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There is something very dreary about the idea that Jamie Dimon is a regular at the White House and that Pres-O praises him and Lord Blankfein as "savvy businessmen".
President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.
It just shows that how "captured" the US president is by a bunch of bankers.
The US President is presumed to be the most powerful person on earth. But our nation is so mortgaged to the bond markets that the president has become a eunuch to those who keep the "liquidity" spigot turned on.
The road to our nation's salvation does not pass through a Treasury auction or the dollar/yen swap rate.
The big banks make record profits because of the over financialization of America and Main Street is starved for credit.
The choice has been made. Pres-O will protect the big global banks to keep borrowing cheaply from foreign nations. And he needs big banks to mediate that borrowing.
Our ruin lies in our indebtedness.
Our salvation lies in simplifying and strengthening the financial system.
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