Photos: CEOs Golden Parachutes From Failed Firms

Karl,
It was Don Corleone who said a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. In it's heyday, the American Mafia couldn't dream of stealing as much money as todays MBAs'.

Instead of Golden Parachutes these CEO failures ought to be given striped prison suits and sent to work on hard labor gangs breaking up rocks. We need to prosecute these con artist white collar criminals, who are the base of Bush/McCain, for all the harm they've caused us on Main Street. It's a shame that these morons of business get big bailouts that just end up costing us regular folks more money that we don't have. It's time we undo the stupid
Reagan dropping off the top tax brackets. We need to make sure these money flim flam men pay far more in income taxes so we in the middle class can have some tax cuts and pay less at the pump.

These Crooks should be dealt with just like a bank robber that robs a bank. Don Henley of the Eagles once said in one of his songs that a man could steal 1000 times more with a briefcase than with a gun.

And McCain wants to give them a tax cut, so they can keep more of their loot!
Afteral they were 'hard working Americans'.

We need to be very clear here concerning the energy that put us where we are today. A decade ago the banks began to offer mortgages to people who years prior would not have qualified. They did this without any discipline, philosophy or safety net. These people were not previously qualified AND for good reasons. To not offer them guidance in the form of a disciplined plan to pay back the mortage and budget planning was suicidal at best. These bank presidents knew exaxctly what they were doing and that is find a way to bring a large amount of money in quickly so they could invest it and show growth. This was a failed philsosphy from the beginning and the financial sector allowed it becasue they were all getting rich.

The only fair and balanced thing to do now is to have each and every bank president return the money they made over the past decade to pay down the Federal debt and aid the economic crisis. This seems very clear to me. I am tired of bailing out other people for their bad decisions. It does not work that way in the real world so why should it work that way for the financial sector. They made a mistake and they need to be held accountable.

Just like our government,,,heck let's give away more of our hard earned money so these guys can live in luxury,,,we need to throw Washington out,,then go after these crooks. Where is my bail out?

Why don't they require every person who works/worked for these companies in any sort of managerial or executive position forfeit ALL of their personal assets to pay for these "bailouts" before they go after ANY taxpayer money????

Unlike the Crash of 1929, you won???t find any of these CEOs and investment bankers jumping out the windows on Wall Street. Why? Because they took the money and ran, that???s why. Off to their multiple, multimillion dollar properties--summer homes in the Hamptons and luxury condos in Manhattan. And you can bet these crooks won???t loose their properties in a mortgage foreclosure. They paid cash!

Throw these financial terrorists in JAIL where they belong. They destroyed our country with their selfish greed!!!

From USA TODAY Editorial Sept 19, 2008:
"Forget for a moment sophisticated financial explanations of what went wrong and look at the campaign score card: Among the nation's 100 top political donors since 1989 are 10 of the nation's biggest banks and investment firms. Their employees showered lawmakers, political parties and presidential candidates with $170 million... While the money flowed, financial institutions generally got what they wanted in Washington..."

WOW! $170 Million dollars! A lot of money! And given over almost two decades... Citizens can't possibly compete with that!

REALLY?

WAKE UP AND THINK!!!!

There's a POWER in SMALL money, LARGE numbers & Immediate Feedback that may not have occurred to you...

ENABLE POLITICAL MICRODONATION!
www.Chagora.com

You cut these payouts by taxing them, to the point such golden parachutes have too many holes to be usable or desireable,
It's interesting this bail out is a Wall Street Journal proposal, and of course the new owner of the wall street journal had an income of $900 million and paid not one dime in tax.

The argument that raising tax's on the wealthy would damage the economy is pretty much shy of evidence at this point

First off I want to thank Newsweek for the photos of these rotten scum-bags. I now have a face I can channel all of my prayers at night for the good LORD take. Then after HE is finished with them and they travel down to meet the one "who we dare not speak his name" can roast there stomachs in hell for ever and ever,,

This'll be just like the war -- an ongoing open-ended crisis for which the gummint will take (every coupla-few months) another buncha ungodly billions, without which the entire world as we've come to know it will simply disappear in a cloud of dust. 'Member the looming "mushroom cloud" that necessitated our immediate immersion in Iraq? Same thing -- shake-down city. It's just a more polite and face-saving way of saying: "We're raiding the Treasury again, suckers -- so put up and shut up."

And since The Fed, etc. seems to be an independent gummint all on its lonesome, it'll keep right on going that way no matter who we elect in Nvember: Big John or St. Barack will just shrug into the camera and tell you how much they deplore it, but ain't nuthin' they can do about it it.

Read 'em and weep, compadres ...'

The real question here is will we stand idly by while Secretary Paulson cooks up the biggest bailout fund for de-regulated private companies and presents it to Congress? How many of us will actually call our representatives and senators and inform them that we are their bosses and we FORBID them to vote in favor of this corporate welfare scheme? Very few, I imagine because everyone's scared about the complete collapse of our financial market. If you REALLY know how this "smoke and mirrors" banking system works, Google "money as debt," and you will see that this collapse is inevitable.

The sad part about this story is that it perpetuates the disturbing trend of rewarding wrong-doers instead of imposing the necessary consequences. That goes for CEOs and politicians alike. We need to do more than march on Washington. We need to march straight onto the floors of the House of Representatives and the Senate like most bosses would when their employees are performing poorly and suspend their pay & benefits or just fire them. Rest assured this bailout deal will be passed with or without your consent. This is what the American public needs to vote on and we have been cut out of the process. I hope everyone can now see that this is not a democracy but an oligarchy and has been for quite some time.

it's all gotten out of hand-from hand-picked "consultants" who strangely enough recommend pay packages of 42 million or more (we're as good as the next genius so we deserve the same or more) to hedge funds who are not regulated and then complain that they cannot continue to savage the system with their special little algorithms--Marx said it best: just let the capitalists bring down their own houses. {they can't help themselves] Who will put lipstick on these pigs?
a subscriber

That we ever got to the place that the government could not let businesses fail is insane; but, unfortunately, it is typical of much of humanity. Indeed, those who led their companies in ways that caused those companies to collapse should not have gotten the farewell packages that they received, nor should they have gotten bonuses along the way in the years that their companies were declining and they continued to take on more debt.

Also, it seems obvious that better regulations are needed for investment companies. If people were more altruistic and less self-seeking, fewer controls would be needed. However, the greed and corruption in our country has seemed to grow and grow and grow. We can work together as a nation to curb this and make things better for each other, or we can let the greed and corruption continue. The former will tend to lead toward a more humane and harmonious country; the latter will tend to lead toward a more divided and hostile country.

Those who lead companies, teams at work, children in classrooms, etc., are to do just that--lead, and lead by example. How can we complain about our children's behavior when the behavior too often seen in leaders in our nation is selfish, irresponsible, and detrimental to those who they are supposedly serving?

Having said that, there are probably few of us who should be so bold as to join in casting stones at those who are currently in the news. This isn't to say that they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions--they should be. It is to say that we need to be careful in blaming them for too much. Have we ourselves stolen from our employers in time, money, or merchandise--even if it's just a candy bar or some personal use of company equipment that is forbidden? Have we ourselves lied to get our way or to avoid responsibility? Do we act selfish, even within our own families? The leaders in our companies and political offices need to be responsible for their decisions and actions, no doubt about it. But the nation really isn't going to get much better until more of us, across the board, also change our ways.

They eat cake while the rest of us starve. They are the lowest form of scum that I've ever seen. There is no difference between these CEOs and our so called government. They all feed off each other like a virus. Just because you own a suit, doesn't make them better than bank robbers.....They are ALL SCUM!

The middle class have been suffering more and more each year while the wealthy have reaped the benefits of all this corruption. In the area where I live ( Washington State) there are multi-million dollar mansions on lakeshore that have been purchased on a whim so that the rich can go there a few weekends each summer. The tax burden for this bailout should be paid for by higher taxes on those at the upper ends of the income scale; they are the ones who have had a free ride under the Bush administration, and at the expense of the rest of us. The time is long overdue for them to pay what is fair.