It amazes me that the so-called contracts for the employees of these companies that lost such massive sums of money still provided for multi-millions of dollars in bonus payments. I’m even more shocked that the stewards of these companies, the CEO, officers, and I would guess a good portion of the management to boot, still have the audacity to not only accept their bonuses, guessing by their reactions to the outrage exhibited by the public, but to still feel entitled to them as if these payments were earned. I fully realize that the paltry few hundred million dollars these executives received is an insignificant amount compared to the full value of the relief funds these companies received and that these bonuses amount to merely a drop in the bucket. I’m not angry that our tax dollars were used to pay these bonuses. I am, none-the-less, furious about executives of failing companies or companies in financial trouble receiving any kind of bonus at all for the simple fact that it is completely unearned.
Corporations have argued that they still have to pay out bonuses and incentives in order to attract top talent, but if this were true and they were attracting such high caliber staff, then why is it that these companies are in the situation they are now? I can point fingers at specific companies, but this is beside the point. Any company that is relying on government funds to continue business due to the inadequacies of their own business model simply doesn’t have all that high caliber of talent working for them. They may have very clever people, this fact is readily apparent because, well, they still convinced the person cutting the checks that they deserved bonuses. But clever does not equal talented. Talented management and executives would never have been so shortsighted as to fall into this trap to begin with. Of course the stunning levels of profits earned in the years previous let everyone turn a blind eye towards the full implications of what was bound to happen. Executives, shareholders, and directors were all complacent in this fiasco. The issue here wasn’t lack of foresight or governmental oversight, but simple greed and lack of ethics causing people to willingly bury their heads in the sand.
As a full time employee looking to buy a house, I had ample opportunity to take advantage of a zero down, stated income mortgage, but when I looked at the terms and how they would play out, with finance ability below that of even a financial tyro, I could see that this was not a good proposition. If I could see the disaster looking for this, then how did these companies fall prey to this situation when run by hugely talented and hence extremely well compensated individuals? The current crisis, which despite the upbeat and out of touch reports saying the opposite, shows no signs of immediate improvement. It’s a vicious circle that the relief funds have done nothing to address. Purchasing is down, which means production is down. There has been a slight upswing in real estate, but it seems to me that this is more from those with funds available taking advantage of the current market to make some great investments rather than greater numbers of people buying homes. When high salaried employment levels begin to rise again and replace the positions lost during the bust, then we will be at the beginning of the recovery phase. Anything else is too much akin to giving a band-aid to someone that was just mauled by a lion. More companies will fail because of this crisis, and more bailout money will be issued. Hopefully this time it will be used to fund entrepreneurs and startups that will contribute to recovery instead of giving a lifeline to companies that had practiced the irresponsible finance that got us into this situation to begin with.
alot of the stimulas money paid out so far is pay back to companies and organizations that contributed to the election of a certain so called president. After all, some of the “projects” are pretty lame. Some of the bonuses paid out were approved by government.