Externe

To give some idea of sums involved, John Thain, the head of Merrill Lynch and, according to the Associated Press, the best-paid CEO, took in $83 million in 2007. His bank averted collapse last month by agreeing to be bought by Bank of America. Merrill’s write-downs from mid-2007 through the third quarter of 2008 total close to $55 billion, or 254 percent of the bank’s profits from 2004 through the first half of 2007.

Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs (formerly headed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson), received $68 million in 2007.

John Mack, the head of Morgan Stanley, received $41.8 million in compensation last year, and his 2007 holdings in Morgan Stanley stock were worth $220 million. Morgan Stanley has written off about $15 billion in bad assets, equal to 70 percent of its boom-time profits.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s total 2008 compensation, according to Forbes magazine, is $27,797,000. His bank has written off some $23 billion over the past 20 months.

At the height of the profit boom, in December of 2006, Wall Street awarded Christmas bonuses totaling more than $100 billion. This sum was more than twice the annual budget of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and nearly twice the US Department of Education budget. It was five times what Washington spent on foreign aid to the entire world, and twice the budget of the City of New York, which employed 250,000 people.

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Small shareholders have been ruined; pensions, IRAs and 401(K)s have been decimated, factories are closing and families in the millions are losing their homes—but the Wall Street titans get to keep every penny they have pocketed for themselves.