Republican Scott Brown and newest big bank BFF no doubt applauded today’s news that JPMorgan Chase, after being bailed out with our money, has set aside $26.9 billion to compensate its workers, up about 18 percent from last year. The average employee will earn about $129,000; employees in its investment bank will bring home roughly $380,0000 each; top executives will get multimillion-dollar payouts.
Brown yesterday went on the record opposing a “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” on the 50 largest financial institutions to recover some of the costs of bailing them out, much of which has not been repaid and probably never will be.
If the Brown campaign has its way, the biggest banks will have even more money for bonuses until the next crisis rolls around, at which point Republicans will no doubt once again push for a bailout from general tax revenues, just as they did under Bush and Paulson. Lather, rinse, repeat.
One notes with a tiny touch of pity the teabaggers who supported “four-home Brown” because they thought he was opposed to Wall Street and big business kicked to the curb in the final days of the campaign. A tiger can’t change his stripes, patriots.
Democrat Martha Coakley, of course, has actually recovered tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers by prosecuting deceptive practices by Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS and others, and supports the idea that banks should pay for their bailout rather than recycling the funds, directly and indirectly, to their executives as personal bonuses.
