Again: You've been Gangbanked

It's bonus time, or rather, past bonus time, and so what does one of the king jerkoffs of the world do? Why, he announces what his bonus is, as if saying "I'm not hiding anything, so see what a good person I am?"

Nah.

The element of this kind of pr that really chaps my ass is how insulting it is, obviously in blind hubris, but for the very fact that he puts it out at all. Because the assumption is that you'll buy it and go, "ok." And even if you don't buy it, wtf are you going to do? You're powerless; you aren't on tap at CNBC or Charlie Rose to give your 2 cents, much less write a NYT column. What are you going to do, blog about it fer gawd's sakes?

HO hum; Lotta good that'll do.

There's also a stupid side bar video; "FDIC: Bonus Culture Needs to Change." This is how stupid our Bizarro World is, what we've been reduced to.

Last, there's a link to this story:

BofA spends $4.4B on its Wall Street bankers

In it, the average comes out to $440k for 10,000 employees.

And at the end of that story is this gem:

AIG doling out $100 million more in bonuses

And yet, I really can't blame them. What they're doing is morally reprehensible, but illegal? Not the way Uncle Scam and they composed it. In fact, it's very logical that these shitheads are doing what they are; it's their economic imperative.

Who we absolutely can and should blame are:

1. Ben Bernanke
2. Hank Paulson
3. Tim Geithner
4. Chris Dodd
5. Barney Frank
6. Larry Summers

And then there're juniors, like Neel Kashkari, a former Goldmanite, instrumental in TARP under Paulson, and now landed in a plumb job with bond house PIMCO.

These are the men who acted on behalf of you and I... and sold us and future generations down the river.

Truth is the CRAs and their corrupt, conflict of interest relationship with the banks are a prime reason any of this crap got started. It smacks of fraud; basically, lying about the financial products the banks were flooding the market with as being investment grade AAA rated.

But it doesn't end there - the rest of the "refs" also bear responsibility, in this case the regulating bodies such as the SEC and the CFTC - the CFTC's Brooksley Born being an exception, and the industry analysts with the notable exception of those who I've mentioned who have had the courage to tell it like it is, among others; Nomi Prins, Gretchen Morgenson, Meredith Whitney, Catherine Austin Fitts (who I haven't written on yet, but plan on), Peter Schiff, William Black, Matt Taibbi, Michael Lewis, and David Cay Johnston. (see sidebar "EM08 Analysts to Trust")

It's also a perfect example of how this incarnation of a republic can catastrophically fail, because as you recall, the initial TARP vote failed due to immense public outcry.

Then in just a matter of a week or so, it "somehow" "miraculously" passed.

Who flipped and why? Don't you want to know?

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JPMorgan's Dimon scores $16M bonus
By David Ellis, staff writer
February 5, 2010: 11:22 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon will take home a nearly $16 million bonus in restricted stock and options for leading the bank to a big profit last year.

In a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, the New York City-based bank said Dimon would collect nearly 200,000 shares of restricted stock and more than a half million in options.

According to a source familiar with the matter, Dimon did not receive a cash bonus. Wall Street firms in general have migrated from paying their employees large cash bonuses to stock and options in response to public outcry over bonuses and in an effort to tie employee compensation to company performance.

Based on Thursday's closing price of $38.35 per share, Dimon's restricted stock payment would be worth about $7.5 million.

His significantly larger options payment however, would only translate into profits if JPMorgan Chase's (JPM, Fortune 500) stock price climbs above $43.20 per share.

Both payments are to be deferred over several years and are subject to so-called "clawback" provisions, which can reclaim pay from workers whose actions may damage the firm's long-term financial health.

Including the $1 million base salary Dimon received for the year, his total pay package for 2009 is nearly $17 million.

Dimon received no bonus in 2008 and a $28 million bonus in 2007.

In a year when the banking industry struggled due to massive mortgage and consumer loan losses, JPMorgan Chase fared relatively well compared to many of its peers.

Last month, the bank revealed it earned $11.73 billion in 2009, more than twice what it earned just a year earlier. That translated into a better year for JPMorgan workers, including the 25,000 employees working on Wall Street.

The company said it spent $9.33 billion to pay workers in its investment banking division, an increase of $1.6 billion from a year ago. That figure includes salaries as well as money set aside for bonuses and works out to an average annual compensation per employee of nearly $380,000.

All eyes are now focused on Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), which has yet to disclose its year-end bonuses for its top executives.

While members of Goldman's management committee declined to take cash bonuses for 2009, there is still speculation that its executives could collect a windfall in stock and options. The Times of London reported earlier this month that company CEO Lloyd Blankfein could receive a bonus payment of close to $100 million.

EM08: Lawrence Summers & 8 Million Reasons

It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most off the Obama administration’s plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the hedge funds, thanks to Summers.

I'm positive that had McCain won we'd now be living on carrots and mud, but then campaigning for president and senator Obama's tell - very vocally advocating for the bank bailout and then voting for it, what we now know is the largest heist in history - as I've said many times now really bothered me. Further, his rush to "do something" and the urgency he was conveying in the aftermath of the vote was at odds with the public perception of him as a thoughtful, reasoned and analytical man.

The dilemma now facing us is not unlike having a friend or relative whom you may like but that does weird or bad things. The problem with Barack is that it's not just a "weird or "bad thing" he's done and is doing, this just happens to be the biggest theft in history that he's a major part of. This is history-making serious. No amount of personal charm or smooth persona can change that.

I still like Barack, or maybe want to like him is more accurate. But he worries me to no end. Here's something on one of his econ advisers, Larry Summers, whom we now add to the players list where we find Geithner and Paulson.

Courtesy of former LA Times columnist Robert Scheer & Truthdig...






Living Large and in Charge
Posted on Apr 7, 2009

By Robert Scheer

Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn’t he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary? No one has been more persistently effective in paving the way for the financial swindles that enriched the titans of finance while impoverishing the rest of the world than the man who is now the top economic adviser to President Obama.

It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most off the Obama administration’s plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the hedge funds, thanks to Summers.

It was Summers, as much as anyone, who in the Clinton years prevented the regulation of the hedge funds that are at the center of the explosion of the derivatives bubble, and the fact that D.E. Shaw, a leading hedge fund, paid the Obama adviser $5.2 million last year does suggest a serious conflict of interest. That sum is what Summers raked in for a part-time gig, in addition to the $2.77 million he received for 40 speaking engagements, largely before banks and investment firms, and on top of the $587,000 he was paid as a professor at Harvard.

Summers was a top adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate last year, and that might have enhanced his speaking fees, which seem to have a base rate of $67,500, the amount he received on each of two occasions when he appeared at Lehman Brothers before that company went bankrupt. Lehman had purchased a 20 percent stake in D.E. Shaw while Summers was employed by the hedge fund, and it would be interesting to know if the subject of the overlapping business came up during Summers’ visit to Lehman.

Lehman was only one on an impressive list of top financial firms that consulted Summers during a troubled period. Goldman Sachs was so interested in his thoughts that it paid him more than $200,000 for two talks, even though it soon needed $12 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. Citigroup, which has been going through hard times, managed only a $54,000 fee for a Summers rap. Merrill Lynch could pony up only a scant $45,000 for a Summers appearance last Nov. 12, but that was at a point when Merrill was in deep trouble, with the government arranging its sale. Summers, anticipating an appointment in the administration of the newly elected Obama and perhaps wanting to avoid any embarrassment the fee might bring, decided to turn over the $45,000 to a charity.

Why was someone as compromised as Summers made the White House’s point man overseeing $2.86 trillion in bailout funds to the financial moguls whom he had enabled in creating this mess and many of whom had benefited him financially? Will no congressional panel ever quiz Summers about his grand theory that the derivatives market required no government supervision because, as he testified to a Senate subcommittee in July of 1998: “The parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies. … ”

Think of the sophisticates at AIG when you read that sentence, and then ask why Summers is once again at large in the public sector. Or take White House spokesman Ben LaBolt’s word for it that “Dr. Summers has been at the forefront of this administration’s work … to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight—all in an effort to help the families across America who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street executives.”

The very same executives that Summers had previously assured us could be trusted without any regulation. Why should we now trust Summers any more than we trust them? Couldn’t Summers just take his ill-gotten gains and go hide out in some offshore tax haven? If this was happening in a Republican administration, scores of Democrats in Congress would be all over it, asking tough questions about what exactly did Summers do to earn all that money from the D.E. Shaw hedge fund. As it is, with their silence they are complicit in this emerging scandal of the banking bailout.