ABC NEWS…not the SOCIALIST WORKER!
Last Year’s Big Five Wall Street Bonuses
Jack Tapper, ABCNews
September 22, 2008 7:12 AM
As the Bush Administration asks for close to a trillion dollars to prevent a worldwide financial cataclysm, here are some numbers you might find interesting — courtesy of the ABC News Research Center and ABC News’ Barbara Paulson.
In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms– Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley — paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.
That’s $10 billion more than the $29 billion loan taxpayers are making to J.P. Morgan to save Bear Stearns.
Those 2007 bonuses were paid even though the shareholders in those firms last year collectively lost about $74 billion in stock declines –their worst year since 2002.
If split equally among the approximately 186,000 workers at the former Big Five Houses, that bonus money means an average of $201,500 per person — more than four times the $48,201 median household income in the U.S. last year.
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