The people who were performing! News flash: the majority of the people in the banks WERE NOT RESPONSIBLE for the losses & collapse. Those who were, and the upper level mgmt who should have been monitoring them, are the ones who deserve whatever punishment.

Kill the division, kill the management, save the company.

Therefore, by Constitutional Amendment, forgo debt-based money entirely for money with inherently increasing purchasing power, money backed 100% by all physical assets encumbered by loans in existence as of January 1, 20?? (backdated) that have been created in fractional-reserve banking institutions of the Federal Reserve System, and by U.S. federal, state, and local debt obligations. ALL such debt contracts, cash, checking account deposits are exchanged for the new American Freedom Note. Creditors forgo liens in exchange for FULL CASH OUT in American Freedom Notes of principal or nominal value of debt contracts. Debtors (individuals as well as institutions) ASSUME 100% OWNERSHIP of encumbered assets. Loans are made from that point on from a FIXED quantity of American Freedom Notes, with interest determined solely by market forces. Fractional-reserve lending is prohibited. Debt forgiveness, greed forgiveness, a clean slate with an honest system that lends capital ENTIRELY from a absolutely fixed amount of savings in new American Freedom Notes. No fractional reserve monkey business, no artificial setting of interest rates by nine white guys sitting around a table in Washington, D.C. Honest money for a change!

@z4ce: Most investment bankers do not have guaranteed bonuses in their contracts. It is understood that bonuses are variable, and depend on the performance of the company. In rare cases some bankers negotiate one or two years of guaranteed bonus when they switch firms, but I doubt that applies to all of the Merrill recipients.

It speaks volumes about the corporate culture in the US.
John Thain is just one, of many, that abject greed is the top priority. They would rather bring down the economy rather than pass up a bonus.
In Japan a disgraced CEO, like Thain, would probably commit suicide rather than face his fellow countrymen......not going to happen here!

@Daniel G. Rivera-Franqui: ignorant comment. a very small percentage of the employees caused this, the majority of them did their jobs properly and earned the right to be compensated. also Thain didn't cause any of this, you call him incompetant (which he may be) but it's his predecessor that caused all of this, Thain did take over until Jan 2008.

@Eliamias: the difference between commission and bonus in this case is minor. these bankers are essentially paid an end of year bonus that's based on how much business they generated throughout the year. it's just a commission that's paid annually.

I hope John Thain burns in hell for all eternity.

He should also be beat in the face with some dicks several hours straight on live TV. Talk about reality television!

can the revolution be televised? i got other things to do.. maybe tape it for me?

@Barbara Merry: This is not entirely true. BAC has paid bonuses this year. Not to executives, but to lower level employees and middle managers. Bonuses are paid in Feb and have already gone out to the employees who earned it. The raises in April have definitely been suspended, but to say BAC did not pay any bonuses this year is flatly incorrect. I know this first hand.

Also, while I understand the outrage, the fact is some of these individual investors WERE profitable, and in my opinion absolutely earned their bonus. If a couple people were successful on their team while another dozen drive the ship into the ground, it is only right that the two earn their contractual bonus.

I understand that's not how it worked, and that the dates moving up is entirely unfair and the outrage is deserved. But to say that no one at all deserves a bonus is short sighted and not considering all the facts.

@qcgallus: Yeah, and if I saw Thain drowning in his swimming pool, I could walk away. There would be no reason to help him since he's still alive when I saw him.

Furthermore, they moved up their bonus schedule. They did this expressly to prevent a lowering of the bonus amounts which would have surely occurred after the next wave of the financial shitstorm that was then on the horizon, I think that invalidates the whole 'they earned it' school of thought. They pulled an Enron plain and simple, pulling out as much money as possible for their own personal gain before anyone outside the company knew what had happened.

I think the fact that he was one of the few people fired in this mess, despite how widespread the abject failure of management throughout the financial sector, speaks volumes. He is the worst of the worst.

even though Merrill as a whole lost a ton of money, they had a lot of employees that earned a bonus. this may not seem to make sense, but the majority of Merrill's divisions were fine and made money. Investment Banking is basically a commission business and if a banker made $50 million dollars for the firm last year, he has to be paid a percentage of that or he'll go elsewhere and earn that company $50 million next year.

If you worked at SEars selling dishwashers and you sold a ton of them, you still need to be paid your commissions, even if the electonics division lost a ton of money. it's the same principle

It first starts with the control of the financial and monetary systems, then (simultaneously) our hearts and minds.

Just follow the money and look who's getting rich off the bailout, just signed into law, and who will remain as indentured servants--to payoff this debt?!

America has been fundamentally changed for the worse!

@bainelaker: Cool. I like my villains beady-eyed.

I won't say that they deliberately made their companies fail, but you can be sure that every decision they made was to enrich them, with absolutely no regard for anyone else. All the talk about benefiting shareholders? That was just to string them along so that the executives could siphon away more case through any mechanism they could think of.

@custommadescare: OR the bonuses are part of a pay package that a company uses to keep employees around. ML has already cut a huge chunk of people away: not paying the bonuses would probably piss off/frighten away the remaining talent. And then they'd really be screwed.

As stupid as it is I can totally see where ML comes from.

And we get pinched and tossed in the slammer for toking a joint. ahh, the madness. Guess we'll find out tonite when his HOPEness gets on TV.

@LadySiren: See Rod Blagovich having his lawyer quit because Rod wouldn't shut up. :)

@TakingItSeriously: Yep. While the plant I work at is profitable, if other plants in the company aren't, we don't get a bonus or as high or any pay increases. It sucks for us but that's what happens.

I'm leaning strongly towards frat boys.

Uh yeah, you can...lots of companies are doing that. You do poorly, go out of business, the workers show up and guess what..no paychecks.

What makes Wall Street think they are immune to that? We should have never bailed these buffoons out.

@TakingItSeriously: Thank you. I helped my company reduce costs and save money and my reward was getting twice as much work, no more money, and a frozen job market.

@z4ce: Considering that I haven't gotten a bonus or even a cost of living raise for the last 3 years and I am facing a pay cut or furlough, I have no sympathy.

@BrazDane: I totally agree. If my employees cost my company 28 billion dollars in a year, I would be getting new employees, not giving bonuses to keep the ones I have. There is no way almost 700 employees at the executive level were performing at a level to deserve any kind of bouns, much less retention of their jobs.

YOU EFFIN' IDIOT, your "TOP EXECUTIVES" were NOT PERFORMING AT ALL!!!! They drove the damn company to the ground!!! Retention? In any case, you should have made them quit! Seriously, if this incompetent a-hole got to be CEO, I should be a King or Grand Czar.

"An additional payment (or other remuneration) to employees as a means of increasing output."

So, if your company fails so miserably and loses so much money that it has to be taken over by another company, you still deserve a bonus? Your executives increased "output" due to building a Brady Bunch-like house of cards?

Is this like "new math" where 2 + 2 doesn't always have to equal 4? 5 and 3 are very close, Mr. Thain! You deserve a banana sticker!

Sometimes the flakkers can't get their clients to take a hint and STFU (been there, still doing that). Also, he is toxic as a client and I wouldn't touch him with a 100-foot pole.

And I'd have to agree - there's no reason failure should be awarded with windfalls of cash. I think I'm voting for the firing squad, no blindfold, no cigarette.

@crazyasianman:

I belive you are correct sir. He infact needs to eat several.

When a company loses 15 billion, retention isnt your problem, its not kicking them out thats the problem. How can you reward people for retention and performance when their performance resulted in a 15 billion dollar loss. As a share holder (i'm not) I would be outraged that they would even think of giving bonuses in a year where they lost money. Bonuses are for years when you out perform the market and everyone makes money.

There's nothing noble about this bonus bonanza.

Others have said it, but I'll say it again:

Why were people rewarded for failure?

"Michael Bolton: Samir and I are the best programmers they got at that place. You haven't been showing up, and you get to keep your job.
Peter Gibbons: Actually I'm being promoted."

Life imitates art at times... Sometimes with frightening results.

my freaking bonus was a slap in the face 90 bucks....call that a bonus you dick head! that probably doesnt even pay the scissors used to cut your fancy hair cut

assholes and dicks sit on top of these investment and banking firm...

should be called Dicks of America & CITI = SHITI

You either shorted the market or longed it, that's a 50/50 choice.
So I should get paid hundreds of millions of Dollars because I guessed the correct answer out of a choice of two?

My location was losing money like crazy, but I was making them a buttload of money. Despite them losing money overall they still paid me a hefty bonus for my work. Why would they do that when they were losing money?

Because if they didn't I'd leave for somewhere that wasn't losing money and they'd lose even more.

Now, does this justify paying the CEO of a failed bank a multimillion dollar bonus? Of course not. But it does explain why they're going to keep paying good performing people their bonuses, regardless of how much money the company loses.

I am glad that Cumo is following up on these issues I mean how else will trial lawyers get their share of the bailout money.

@TCTH: You got that right .Not only should they be earned I thought bonuses were ' extra ' for ' extra ' .

This is nothing but taking caring of their pals and possibly even hush money .Again I'm tired of this was too complex crap .They knew or should've known what they were doing .

In the real world, you would not only NOT be getting a performance bonus for such lousy performance, your ass would have been fired and you'd have been gone faster than a fart in a whirlwind.

Paying a bonus for engineering new and innovative ways to screw the public may GET you a bonus as we've seen recently, but it doesn't EARN you one.

I'm tired of this crap of ' what did I do ' or ' they were so confusing '-the mortgages/cdos-BULLCRAP !!! .

You already have the media doing specials on this ,there have been articles and posts on the consumerist about this .You can't tell that the people in the business dealing with this crap everyday didn't have a clue .You mean no one in the industry snickered at the ' quality ' of the mortgages or what a house of cards it was .OR that this stuff was formally known as junk bonds ie Micheal Milken .

I guess what I'm trying to say is that most of those recieving the bonuses either knew or should've known about this crap .And they want a bonus for dealing in it or profiting off of it-at our expense .

What a crock-they just don't get it .

These bonuses by the way are seldom contractual except for a newly-hired person. there is often a guarantee for the first year only, thereafter it is salary plus bonus, with the bonus based as Thain said on profitability. For him to say there was nothing to indicate the bonuses shouldn't be paid is completely ridiculous, given that Merrill Lynch was floundering, about to collapse, and would have if the government hadn't forced Bofo to buy them. When Ken Lewis learned the true cost of acquiring ML,ie when he found out they had misrepresented their losses, he tried to cancel the deal. the government said oh no we cannot let ML fail! end result: 40% of BoA is now out of work, and those fat cats at ML still have their jobs! and their bonuses. while loyal and profitable bofa employees were let go, with NO bonuses for their hard work for 2008. furthermore, many of the top MErrill people have now abandoned their positions with Bofa and gone to work for a competitor, bonuses in hand. It's crazy. I would say unfair but that sounds like whining.

Thain is certainly the poster boy for disconnected privileged excess.

These stories get more outrageous every week! What's next week's revelation, that these asshat bank execs spent $5 billion on hookers and blow after they knew the bailout $ was coming?

Apparently I need to proof read and comment while NOT drinking. Nice

Ah, I see. So basically they wouldn't have gotten bonuses if they hadn't manipulated the schedule. Yeah, that looks pretty much like fraud.

If the pay were guarnteed, it would be in "base pay".

Given that losses were $27 Billion, I don't know how targets could have been met by anyone.

A pulp isn't far enough ... try for Puree

I cannot imagine that a million+ dollar bonus isn't exactly detailed in a contract. Not all bonuses are tied to company profitability (my current one isn't). In the case of brokerage executives, you would think it would be. But that appears otherwise, doesn't it?

I any case, I don't see how you can renegade on the contract unless you force the company into bankruptcy. And we didn't do that. We bailed them out.

This is not John Thains fault.

He is simply doing what people without ethics (and morals ) do. He is helping himself and his cronies to all the money that they can carry off because, well , he can. You would,too,if the owners of your company looked the other way while you took whatever you could out of the till. Even though the money that he divvied up to his buds like monkeys at a salad bar rightfully belonged to the shareholders,they had extraordinary powers to do so because the board of directors approved their salary and bonus plans unanimously ,year after year. All was well as long as the shareholders were getting theirs. It's only after the company was wrecked (and has damn near taken Bank Of America down with them) that everbody gets their knockers in a bunch and starts calling for heads to roll.

Shareholders could have rebelled .(Indeed,some companies shareholders have placed their CEO's pay and perks up for votes by everyone. These initiatives are usually blocked and always voted down).The Board of directors could have voted "no" to these outrageous thefts of company money. We all know how that turned out.Or the fucking owners of the company could have read the public filings and proxy staements and sold their stock when they realized they were being swindled.

But no. It's a lot easier to talk about firing squads and ass whoopins' AFTER the damage is done.

Working my rear off for a year with no chance of a merit ... or even cost of living increase? Yes, and at least I have a job!

Ok, here's a nice compromise. You can have your bonus, but the tax on it is 100 PERCENT. The company obviously didn't need our money to stay afloat, so we should tax the recipient 100%,and put the money back in our hands.

Maybe someone needs to start a 7.62mm donation pool or something.

These asses need to be put in front of a firing squad and nothing less.

*I have seen work contracts that stipulated that if a company or product met a certain profit, you would get a % of that profit. When the company fails, I don't see these bigwigs putting a % of their own money back in to help fix the problem.

Given that -$15,300,000,000 = $3,600,000,000 bonus, imagine how much they would have made if they'd broken even!

What he also said is that 'nothing happened in the world, or the economy..." meaning that their $27,000,000,000 loss is entirely on the shoulders of management. I want a job where I can fail that catastrophically, and still make my yearly bonus. God Bless America.

Sure you can! I know many people who were denied their bonuses this year due to the economy. If we can handle it, I wonder why these guys can't.

Oh I see the absurdity. I don't think they should have been bailed out. Rather, they should fallen into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and and the bonuses owed would just become another "debtor" in the bankruptcy.

But if they have cash to meet their existing contracts what choice do they have but to pay them out?

$3.6B is 75 000 people with salaries of $48 000 , the median household income of the US. Contractually obligated or not, with such definite organizational failure, the people at the top should not receive reward for incompetent performance.

So should we force a company to not pay bonuses to the employees who did well, just because the management didn't oversee the idiots who almost bankrupted the company?

I'm not trying to argue that the scheduling of the bonuses isn't criminal. Myself, like every commenter here, doesn't know enough to make that claim. The AG doesn't either and that's why he's requesting information. You should just understand that while the firm may have lost massive amounts, there were still people in the bond market and such who helped the company and deserve cash.

This guy needs to go to prison. That Federal PMITA prison. Along with all these 'top performers'

Snipers taking out crooked CEOs, blood running in the streets, even the "legal" method of making them pay every penny back, with interest!

But yeah, until one of those things (or more), happens, tough luck, it's business as usual.

How on God's green Earth can you want to retain, let alone reward, people who have screwed up so royally?!!!

If HE, who surely got the biggest bonus, deserved to get fired for incompetence then OF COURSE most of the others probably deserve the same thing. Even if they don't, how can they possibly defend taking a PERFORMANCE bonus in the fiscal year that killed the bank through mismanagement?

Complete. abject. moral. FAILURE!

@mdoublej: Ah, Louis CK, one of the best comedians out there IMO.

Also, a black jacket with a red tie? How plain.

@z4ce: You really don't see the absurdity in paying billions of dollars in tax payer bonuses for a failed company? You must live in a world similar to a David Lynch movie. Or maybe you are a robot sent from the future where money doesn't exist anymore.

@z4ce:

The bonuses couldn't have been that iron clad in contracts or they wouldn't have been able to move them forward into December.

pardon the obscenity, but I believe it would be in John Thain's best interest to eat a dick.