Goldman Sachs, a recipient of billions of dollars in government bailout money, has built up $16 billion in its bonus pool so far this year, according to the Post. This is on track to be the largest year for bonuses ever. In unrelated news, the national unemployment rate is still above 10%.





Well when you pull down such a massive profit, of course bonuses will be higher, but you'd think they'd tone down the amount due to the anti-bank climate. I guess they don't mind being taxed out the ass and vilified.
Goldman received $13 billion from AIG thanks to the bailout. The govt should have protected the commercial banks and should have left the former investment banks to crash out of existence. But what do you expect when ex-Goldman people run the treasury.
There should be an open season on filthy crooked bankers who are robbing this country and the normal people blind. Go ahead and screw us over some more and give out bonuses so we can bail you out again in 3 years. Meanwhile our city has over 10% unemployment and people literally cannot feed their families because of these bastards causing this depression. Too bad a lot more of them didn't jump off the Brooklyn Bridge when they were down and out 6 months ago. The world would be a much better place without them.
You generally have NO idea how finance work.
I has monies!
jealousy rears its usual head on the blogosphere yet again.
goldman has lost $ only one quarter throughout this crisis. they've posted record earnings in several. shareholders did get clobbered, but have also recovered substantially, and anyone who bought earlier this year has made a fortune. the govt has been paid back at a nice profit for taxpayers. and there is still a lot of $ left over, even after these bonuses.
and why does goldman always do so well? because they pay top $ for employees, among other reasons. it's no longer the govt's money to complain about, and shareholders can hardly complain about the bank having navigated the crisis as well or better than anyone else out there.
The chickenfuckers got bailed out by their old buddy the Treasury Secretary and then made a fortune selling gov't debt. If the next bomb went off at 85 Broad Street few people would shed a tear.
That is an irresponsible and hateful comment full of ignorance.
Pushed mortgage-backed CDOs to their clients while dumping them on the side from their own corporate accounts.
So it's the banks' fault that people can't read or understand financial instruments? They should have never gotten involved to drive the initial demand in the first place.
Personal responsibility quickly turned into "The bank offered me something I didn't understand. Naturally I signed it because if anything were to go wrong, someone will fix it for me."
OMG. Thank you so much for that response. Classic.
I want that bonus money. All you assholes go out and get me that bonus money.
Yeah, but I want a 40% cut!
John Kuhner, your headline and two sentence post is misleading and out of line.
Goldman Sachs was given bailout money without asking for it. They didn't need a cent and promptly returned said money in the quickest bounce back in history, and with 26% interest. This money undoubtedly went to some flopped government program like acorn.
If only the same could be said for the irresponsible borrowers (read poor people) who took out loans against the houses they put 1% down for and brought this economy to it's knees.
Oh and your link is broken.
Link fixed.
16B in bonuses = 8B in tax revenue. Goldman is essentially bailing out the government year after year.
Ok ok, Lloyd Blankfein, we get it: Goldman Sachs good, everyone else bad. Now go pick up your bonus check.