Goldman Sachs hands out £7bn salary and bonus package after its £6bn bail-out

sorry if this has been posted before, this just came out today

Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses - despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out.

The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday.

Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million.

The size of the pay pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out.

As Washington pours money into the bank, the cash will immediately be channelled to Goldman's already well-heeled employees.

News of the firm's largesse will revive the anger over the 'rewards for failure' culture endemic in the world of high finance.


daily mail

You got to see it to believe it.
So all those billions of pounds of governement bail out money just went to the 443 GS partners as christmas bonuses??? For a job well done??????

O.. my.. god..

please comment, because i am absolutely speechless.

mr.J

reply to post by mister Jones


ahhh I see how this is misleading now...

I was about to get all mad too, until I saw that it was in salaries, or payroll...

Only 3 mil going to bonuses. I'm not saying thats good, but its not as bad as It was on first glance.

Wow, this one almost had me going pretty bad...

How on earth dare they ask for a bail out, just to "donate" it among themselves as a mullti million dollar christman bonus? They have no shame at all?

I knew ethics had long left the building in high finance, but this just baffles me...

Please share this to everyone you know, people need to know about it.
This is the stuff that revolutions are made of...

This ultra decadence has to stop.

peace
mr.J

This is more sensationalism...

The media wants you to hate wall street... so when they give you figures they lump Salaries and bonuses together...

Salaries are already owed to the workers... so i don't have a problem right now with people getting paid what they are owed...

its only 3 million in bonuses... which if I did my math right comes out to about 4k each in bonuses... thats not way out of the ordinary...

I'm more interested in why the PTB want us to hate wall street... is this a distraction tactic?

the avergae bonus listed is 3 million pounds PER executive, not a total of 3 million pounds.

so that works out to around... 2,170,363,320 dollars US.

so they ask for 10 billion, and give over 2 billion out as christmas bonuses to people who are failing to do thier jobs correctly.

Originally posted by nj2day

its only 3 million in bonuses... which if I did my math right comes out to about 4k each in bonuses... thats not way out of the ordinary...

According to the article...

Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million.

... not £3M total. £3M "on average" per partner. That's over £1.3B just for the "partners" alone.

[edit on 30-10-2008 by 12m8keall2c]

Originally posted by nj2day
This is more sensationalism...

The media wants you to hate wall street... so when they give you figures they lump Salaries and bonuses together...

Salaries are already owed to the workers... so i don't have a problem right now with people getting paid what they are owed...

its only 3 million in bonuses... which if I did my math right comes out to about 4k each in bonuses... thats not way out of the ordinary...

I'm more interested in why the PTB want us to hate wall street... is this a distraction tactic?

erm.. that's 3 mil each..
a quick calculation tells me that a total of £1.329.000.000 will be given to the GS partners. That a bit less than 1/4th of the total bail out they asked for.
Maybe it's me, but that seems over-the-top in these times of crisis

mr.J


edit:
thanks whiterabbit and 12m8keall2c to point this out, you beat me to it

[edit on 30/10/2008 by mister Jones]

reply to post by whiterabbit85


by god your right! I misread that...

I wish I had a bonus that big...

I do have a problem with the bonuses... big time... i thought bonuses were supposed to be given when companies did well... not failing...

Hopefully they will spend that bonus on non-perishables and Spam they'll need it... just like the rest of us

Originally posted by yeahright
Salaries need to be paid. But when you need a bailout from taxpayers, bonuses should be cancelled. All of them. In any amount. Down to -0-. In fact, the bailout money should be contingent upon it.

I couldn't agree more. Salaries are one thing, but to be handing out Christmas bonuses right after needing to be bailed out is simply outrageous.

Its 10,000 U.S. staff are expected to share a £1.5billion bonus pool. The payouts were agreed as part of the rescue takeover of Lehman's American arm by Barclays last month.

Sensationalism . . . I think not.

That figure is $2.77 billion U.S. shared between ten thousand people which equates roughly to over a quarter million bucks a person.

Again I ask, 'Where'd that money come from?'

I haven't had an increase in pay in five years, yet my tax dollars get thrown by an ex CEO of a pimped-out financial institution (that whored my future gambling on credit markets that were artificially built on trickery, sleight of hand and outright lies) to their foot soldiers who carried out the very offensive upon our economic well being.

Originally posted by nj2day
reply to post by mister Jones

 

ahhh I see how this is misleading now...

I was about to get all mad too, until I saw that it was in salaries, or payroll...

Only 3 mil going to bonuses.

But what does that say if ALL OF THE MONEY is going to payroll and salaries. I mean they apparently were giving huge bonuses to their partners and committing some very shady practices to get in this situation don't you think?

That is the problem, they are just about Bankrupt from all of the largess committed, and some are too thick to see why it makes people mad at all of them.

[edit on 30-10-2008 by TH3ON3]

reply to post by mister Jones


Thanks for this great post. It is a horrible evil that we witness. The interlocking board of directors (interlocking directorate) of Goldman Sachs should be destroyed (financially divested and made homeless) &/or imprisoned instead being openly allowed to keep robbing us of security and happiness. They are the true 'bank-robbers', and stand 'above the law'. All of their interlocking directorate, and it's overlaps with the interlocking directorate of the City of London, should be 'retired':











[edit on 30-10-2008 by counterterrorist]

Originally posted by 12m8keall2c
Salaries need to be paid. But when you need a bailout from taxpayers, bonuses should be canceled. All of them. .

Originally posted by yeahright

I couldn't agree more. Salaries are one thing, but to be handing out Christmas bonuses right after needing to be bailed out is simply outrageous.

Again failure to understand why this is happening...They can't have the big shot high roller ceo's and partners failing to make their payments on their Porsche's and vacation houses in the Hampton's.

thanks counterterrorist, this needs to be addressed.
This is what happened in Belgium last week, after Fortis went down

The Belgian government on Wednesday expressed anger over revelations that Fortis, the beleaguered Belgian-Dutch lender, had paid about €4m ($5m) in bonus to its chief financial officer when he was demoted in August. Gilbert Mittler, one of the architects of the conglomerate’s ill-fated participation in the €71bn acquisition of ABN Amro, left the executive committee amid mounting shareholder pressure and became an adviser to the chief executive. “It is frankly scandalous,” Yves Leterme, the Belgian prime minister, said. He added that the government would seek to have Mittler’s payout returned.

eFinancial News

It was leaked that the guy who was directly responsible for the fall of Fortis, received a 4mil bonus to be demoted from CFO to advisor to the CE.

Nice eh, getting bonuses for making wrong decisions that make the company almost go bankrupt. I'd like to see the belgian government try to get that money back... like that's gonna happen.

where's the outrage?
We don't have a problem with the fact that the only people getting bonuses this year are the ones responsible for the economic mess we're in?

Unbelievable.

These banks are still giving out million dollar bonuses, even though they accidentally collapsed the global economy.

I want to know how many working people think they will still be getting a bonus this year or next year? The company that I work for is still posting record profits and I will be willing to bet that we will get no bonus and no raise for next year due to the "economic climate".

I doubt I am alone here either. Do you think you will be getting a raise or a bonus soon?