On the recordFebruary 11, 2010
In the years leading up to the financial crisis, risky and reckless bonus-laden pay packages ruled at Wall Street banks. After crashing our economy, these too-big-to-fail banks needed the Bush administration and the American taxpayer to bail them out. The Temporary Asset Relief Program, TARP, pumped billions and billions of taxpayer dollars into the financial system to stabilize our economy and prevent another Great Depression. The Obama administration continued the TARP program while also taking necessary and swift action passing the Recovery Act. But unemployment remains high even as our economy begins to recover, and Wall Street is back to its old ways. Insurance giant AIG got $182.3 billion in bailout money. Last Wednesday, AIG paid $100 million more in bonuses to its employees. Goldman Sachs got $10 billion directly from TARP and another $12.9 billion in taxpayer aid through the AIG bailout. Goldman will pay its employees bonuses worth $16 billion. The average banker at Bank of America got a $400,000 bonus one year after the bank took $45 billion from TARP. The average worker in Ohio makes just over $41,000 a year.
