Bill, I take it back. It WAS during the Clinton administration. The news source I had taken it from (it was a television documentary about the events) said it stemmed from the Bush years. But when I saw your posting, I dug deeper and found you are right.

The rest of my posting I stand by.

You can blame the little guy, or the brokers, and no doubt they share some of the blame, but Wall Street KNEW IT WAS BAD PAPER but packaged and sold it anyway, which was a direct and primary cause of the financial system meltdown.

As far as "they had a contract", yes, I agree, but they were financiers who caused the problem..how can ANY bonus be justified? They brought their own companies to their knees....how can ANY bonus be justified? Remember, bonuses are there to incite and reward good performance.

Plus the optics are horrible. Hundreds of billions of public monies went into these institutions to make sure they did not fail because the financial world was a mess, then hundreds of millions went right out into the pockets of those individuals who caused it.


If writing ever becomes work I think I'm going to have to stop