Andrew Cuomo, New York’s Attorney General, was investigating the banking financial crisis and has recently released his findings for the original 9 banks that received government funds to bail them out of ruin.

Every taxpayer who reads the report should be angered by it. In a time of financial crises, the banks “good ole boy” system rewarded thousands of execs with multi million dollar bonuses so they could keep up their lush lifestyles through the financial pinch. WTF?

In Citigroups case.. the bank reported losses of 27 billion plus or $5 plus a share to stock holders, yet Citigroup paid execs over 5 billion in bonuses. So where did the 5 billion come from? most likely the 45 billion from taxpayers.

Meryll Lynch got 10 billion in help, lost 27 billion and paid 3.6 billion in executive bonuses

Goldman Sachs 2.3 billion in earnings, 4.8 billion in bonuses and 10 billion in bail out funds

Anyway, sure we all see the trend. Banks droping like flies? I wonder why? Doesn’t every company pay bonuses in excess of earnings? What, stockholders actually expect a return on investment?

Andrew Cuomo had this to say in respect to the US banking system paying for failure.

“There is no clear rhyme or reason to the way banks compensate and reward their employees. In many ways, the past three years have provided a virtual laboratory in which to test the hypothesis that compensation in the financial industry was performance-based. But even a cursory examination of the data suggests that in these challenging economic times, compensation for bank employees has become unmoored from the banks’ financial performance.”

The following numbers are the banks that received taxpayer dollars and the bonuses that they paid out to their execs after getting the money.

The first number is bonuses over 3 million, second is 2 million and third is 1 million.
B of America 28 65 172
Bank of New York Mellon 12 22 74
Citigroup 124 176 738
Goldman Sachs 212 391 953
J.P. Morgan Chase over 200 - 1626
Merrill Lynch 149 - 696
Morgan Stanley 101 189 428
State Street 3 8 44
Wells Fargo 7 22 62

The Wall Street Journal did publish individual numbers for the various banks. Below is B of A and how much money they received, their reported earnings and bonuses. B of A reported earnings of 4 billion, got 45 billion in taxpayer bailout money, then paid 3.3 billion to execs in bonuses for a “job well done“?

Tarp funds received: $45 billion ($15 billion on the Capital Purchasing Program on Oct. 28, 2008, $10 billion on Jan. 9, under the Capital Purchase Program for Merrill Lynch; $20 billion on Jan. 16 under the Targeted Investment Program).

2008 Earnings: $4 billion, or 55 cents a share.

2008 total bonuses: $3.33 billion in cash and stock ($2.9 billion of the mixed cash and equity bonuses were discretionary, and $337 million were guaranteed).

Top four recipients received a combined $64.01 million.

The next four received $36.85 million.

The next six received $31.39 million.

Number that received more than $10 million: 4

Number that received more than $8 million: 8

Number that received more than $5 million: 10

Number that received more than $3 million: 28

Number that received more than $2 million: 65

Number that received at least $1 million: 172

Total work force: 243,000.

the full report

I say scam because I feel that the city of Los Angeles totally scammed it’s population, here’s why.

We here in Los Angeles have been hearing how the city is strapped for cash for years now.  A few points I have noticed..

• My kids school xeroxes pages from books rather than actually getting books for the kids.
• Some schools have a Xerox limit on paper and teachers need to supply their own.
• This year, there is NO summer school for the kids who need it.
• The city is putting up “no Parking” signs on the fly and giving tickets to entire blocks 2 mins after signs went up (my street)
• I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a pothole to get fixed
• anyway… you get the point.

And now this?

When a city can no longer afford summer school, you would think that a big party for a performer’ death by self destruction (not scientist, not doctor, not teacher, not fallen cop, etc.) would be out of the question. right? wrong.

The city of Los Angeles spent 1.4 million dollars for a few hours of Michael Jackson tributes and parade… WTF? Rumor has it that law enforcement and other city workers were paid double time to do the gig. Again, WTF?  I am so tired of politicians who are supposed to represent the general public care more about what the law enforcement and other unions think. The unions always come first, kids summer school, not even in the top 10.

So now the city is down 1.4 million and is asking for donation. The city couldn’t even get that right.

The city of Los Angeles has only received $17,000 of the $1.4 million it cost to put on Michael Jackson’s memorial – but it’s not because MJ fans are cheap … it’s because of the complete failure of the official donation website.

Seems the City of L.A. is too broke to afford a half decent web server or a staff to keep it up.

The mayor is begging for private donations and they have gottan some, but far from the 1.4 million they need to cover the bill. Seriously now, we all love MJ, but do we want to pay for a memorial we never had a choice over?

MJ was once one of the richest entertainers around. We know he blew much of that in settlements to little boys families, maybe one of them should step in and foot the bill for the man who made them wealthy. Unfortunately we all know the taxpayers of Los Angeles will pay for it in the end.

From the Mayor regarding the Michael Jackson Memorial situation:

The Office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released the following statement today regarding online donations for the Michael Jackson Memorial:

“After collecting more than $17,000 from hundreds of donors in support of the Michael Jackson Memorial Tuesday morning, the City’s Information Technology Agency could not handle the high volume of traffic or adequately respond to frequent and prolonged server crashes. Consequently, the City was unable to receive contributions for several hours Tuesday afternoon. The server also failed for at least 12 consecutive hours Tuesday evening, from 8:00 PM (PST) through 8:00 AM (PST) the next day, and periodically throughout Wednesday morning.

The City apologizes for the inconvenience to those who were unable to contribute to the memorial costs. The Information Technology Agency is attempting to rectify the problems.

The City encourages donors to revisit http://mayor.lacity.org to make their donation.”