Reflections

Merrill Lynch Made 696 Employees Millionaires With Taxpayer Money

Posted by on Feb 13, 2009 | 11 Comments

After Bank of America purchased Merill Lynch using taxpayer funds, the company proceeded to pay out millions to employees for bonuses. The main complaint from those who are looking into this is how a company could even consider any type of bonuses after posting a $15 billion loss? The people who ran Merill Lynch are coming under fire for paying out over $1 million in bonuses to some 686 employees.

The Consumerist states that:

Bearing in mind that Merrill moved up its bonus payments in advance of its announced $15 billion quarterly loss and $27 billion annual loss, we have determined that Merrill Lynch made the following bonus payments:

  • The top four bonus recipients received a combined $121 million;
  • The next four bonus recipients received a combined $62 million;
  • The next six bonus recipients received a combined $66 million;
  • Fourteen individuals received bonuses of $1 0 million or more and combined they received more than $250 million;
  • 20 individuals received bonuses of $8 million or more;
  • 53 individuals received bonuses of $5 million or more;
  • 149 individuals received bonuses of $3 million or more;
  • Overall, the top 149 bonus recipients received a combined $858 million;
  • 696 individuals received bonuses of $1 million or more.
    Again, these payments and their curious timing raise serious questions as to whether the Merrill Lynch and Bank of America Boards of Directors were derelict in their duties and violated their fiduciary obligations.

It should be interesting to see what further information is discovered as the investigation proceeds.I personally believe that the people involved in this and others who received taxpayer money should be asked to return it. I believe it would be a simple matter to ask for the return of the money and if it is not returned have the IRS examine the returns of these people for the past three years and for the next 10 or 20 years. This should get their attention.

As for the executives who handed out these undeserved bonuses maybe some time in jail will get their attention as well.

Source.

  • D Lowrey

    “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.” – Eddie Murphy in Trading Places.

  • zenium

    D. Lowrey, great idea. Just not going to happen. Those that have the gold already know how to break the rules to take more gold from you and me.

  • David

    What do I think? I’m mad as hell! The county health department is on my parents (76 and 86 years old) to make some repairs to their home or they will lose it. They were turned in by the local fire department when my Mother had a diabetic episode and they had to transport her to the county hospital. They said the home wasn’t safe because of no hot water, a non functioning furnace, which I’ve since replaced with a brand new one, and sagging kitchen floors. Right now they’re trying to get a grant from a neighborhood association to fix the floors. That’s the big thing. I can buy a new water heater but can’t do the floors because I’m crippled. So we have fat cats raking in huge bonuses while elderly and crippled people suffer from excessive persecution. If they had just a tiny fraction of the smallest of those bonuses they could fix their house. I’m doing all I can but fear it won’t be enough. It just seems to me that helping the poor would be a far better use of all that government money instead of giving it to criminal Wall Street investors.

  • Andrew Podolak

    Dear To Whom It May Concern

    My Name is Andrew Podolak and we live in Victoria Australia

    I and my partner Anne are both very sick.

    I have a syndrome called Fibromyalgia with is a treble thing to have, is a destruction of the joints and muscles most days I am in so much pain I cry because the muscles feel like they are ripping of the bone this is my main sickness I have others as well.

    My partner Anne was sexual assaulted at work and has never been able to recover from it she got a small payout with just covered our debt’s she has nightmares almost every night and wakes up screaming I fell so sorry for her I wish I could carry her pain.

    My reason for writing to you both is that we rent and I am fearful that if I take my own life as I am suicide is leaving Anne on the street as she could not afford the rent by herself.

    I am asking you, no I am begging you if you could please help us buy a small house, nothing fancy just a small home so Anne could live in peace if the worst was to happen

    We can barely afford the rent as it is, We also have two cockatoo in the flat that are hand rerd so we have to think about them too they are like our babies as Anne and I could never have kids so we bought them while they were in the egg and rerd them with as much love and care as we could.

    Our car has just turned 27 years of age and has 360,000 klms on it, it is on its last legs and them we will have to catch public transport to the Doctors which will take over 4 hours there and back.

    So I am begging you to help us have our own home will take away so much stress from our lives
    I could even begin to tell you we don’t want a fancy home just a small home so that if I pass away Anne will be secure and so will the Cockatoo they live inside with us so they are keep warm.

    We often go without meat and vegetables just so them can have good food, we believe if you are going to own a pet you look after them and give them the very best food and Love and care

    Please help us we will be forever in your debt and would own our lives to you…..

    Thank you for your time to read this letter.

    Anne and I can be contacted at our flat in Australia Victoria on +61 03 52825432 or by e-mail
    andrewpodolak@iinet.net.au.

    Our Address Is Unit 2 66 Cameron Crescent Lara Victoria Australia 3212

    Everything I have said is true and correct and can be verified by our Doctors.

    PLEASE HELP US
    THANK YOU

    Wishing you the very best

    Andrew Podolak & Anne Drew’s

  • Andrew Podolak

    I would like soneone to help us

    Dear To Whom It May Concern

    My Name is Andrew Podolak and we live in Victoria Australia

    I and my partner Anne are both very sick.

    I have a syndrome called Fibromyalgia which is a terrible thing to have. It, is a destruction of the joints and muscles, most days I am in so much pain I cry because the muscles feel like they are ripping off the bone. This is my main sickness I have others as well.

    My partner Anne was sexually assaulted at work and has never been able to recover from it she got a small payout which just covered some of our debt’s. She has nightmares almost every night and wakes up screaming, I fell so sorry for her I wish I could carry her pain.

    My reason for writing to you both is that we rent and I am fearful that if I take my own life as I am suicidal and it would be leaving Anne on the street as she could not afford the rent by herself.

    I am asking you, no I am begging of you if you could please help us buy a small house, nothing fancy just a small home so Anne could live in peace if the worst was to happen.

    We can barely afford the rent as it is, We also have two cockatoos in the flat that are hand reared so we have to think about them too they are like our babies as Anne and I could never have kids so we bought them while they were in the egg and reared them with as much love and care as we could.

    Our car has just turned 27 years of age and has 360,000 klms on it. It is on its last legs and then we will have to catch public transport to the Doctors which will take over 4 hours there and back.

    So I am begging you to help us have our own home. It will take away so much stress from our lives.
    I can’t even begin to tell you we don’t want a fancy home just a small home so that if I pass away Anne will be secure and so will the Cockatoos. They live inside with us so they are kept warm.

    We often go without meat and vegetables just so they can have good food, we believe if you are going to own a pet you look after them and give them the very best food and Love and care

    Please help us, we will be forever in your debt and would owe our lives to you…..

    Thank you for your time to read this letter.

    Anne and I can be contacted at our flat in Australia Victoria on +61 03 52825432 or by e-mail
    andrewpodolak@iinet.net.au.

    Our Address Is Unit 2 66 Cameron Crescent Lara Victoria Australia 3212

    Everything I have said is true and correct and can be verified by our Doctors.

    PLEASE HELP US
    THANK YOU

    Wishing you the very best

    Andrew Podolak & Anne Drews

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  • Kyle Polansky

    Thanks for the post. I’m going to try it out in a VM.

  • Anonymous

    Still downloading, can’t wait to try it on my laptop. My Linux is being uncooperative as of current

  • Anonymous

    One thing is for sure MSFT has a massive developer network. I recently finished managing a development effort using .NET3.5 and WPF. The development timeline was fast and using an agile method allowed the team to get a product to market quickly. How quickly can the dev. community can adapt and migrate the massive base of programs already in production to apps that are cross platform capable? This will be very important because there is a lot of competition for market share right now and with PC manufacturers dumping hardware units it seems that MSFT stranglehold may finally slip in the years to come at the enterprise workstation level. More and more people want to be untethered from the legacy PC. Someone needs to make the PC platform sleek and sexy in order to compete with consumers and users that are tired of noisy fans, burning laps, clunky cases and flaky hardware drivers

  • http://twitter.com/glyakk glyakk

    I am actually quite excited about this, and I am not even a Windows user.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Simeon-Latham/1676263153 Simeon Latham

    “Redmond start your photo copiers” -Bertrand Serlet