Billions in bonuses using our money

This just makes me so freaking mad that it makes my eyes cross. If it were up to me, Obama would not get one more penny of the bailout until this crap was not only stopped, but reversed. Every executive who took a bonus should not only be required to give it back, they should be fired.

After losing billions, taking billions from taxpayers and avoiding disaster only by selling itself to Bank of America, Merrill Lynch was still ready to give a multimillion-dollar “performance” bonus to its chief executive, John Thain. It refrained only after a storm of protest that reached from Main Street to Capitol Hill.

As it turns out, the outrage was not enough to stop the flow of money to other executives. According to a report in The Financial Times on Thursday, Merrill granted $3 billion to $4 billion in bonuses in December — part of a total compensation budget of $15 billion for the year that was just slightly less than that of 2007.

Full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/opinion/23fri2.html