All American Blogger » Obama Preaches Responsibility to Wall St. with Tax Cheat Treasury Secretary By His Side, UPDATED: With More Irony

Obama Preaches Responsibility to Wall St. with Tax Cheat Treasury Secretary By His Side, UPDATED: With More Irony

Posted by Duane Lester on Jan 30th, 2009 • Clicks

President Obama has his panties in a wad because there are some Wall Street executives who are pulling in billion dollar bonuses when they are receiving government bailouts. That’s irresponsible, he says:

“It is shameful,” Obama said from the Oval Office. “And part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility.”

Shameful? Perhaps it was just an innocent mistake, your Presidenciness. I mean, you are sitting next to a tax cheat you nominated to be in charge of the IRS. Do you really want to be preachy about responsibility in that forum?

It’s also the height of irony for a guy who is about to sign a trillion dollar “stimulus package” to call for private industry to show some restraint.

And about those billion dollar bonuses…I would bet that most of those were contractual in nature, meaning the companies had to give them out, regardless of performance or profit. So, legally, they had to pay them.

And how many of those receiving bonuses took federal money? And those that did, how many were forced to take a handout?

UPDATE:

Found this in Neal’s Nuze, a great read every morning. While Obama is blasting Wall Street for taking bonuses, New York City and State lose almost $1,000,000,000 in taxes. Why? Because Wall Street bonuses were down this year:

New York state will lose a whopping $1 billion in tax revenues this year because cash bonuses to Wall Street employees plummeted 44 percent in 2008, according to a bombshell new report.

In an analysis released this morning by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, he estimates that the securities industry paid its New York City employees $18.4 billion in bonuses last year compared to $33 billion in 2007 — a drop in bonuses that will also cost the city $275 million.