Bonuses for Disaster: Wall Street's Shame Circuits Burn Out

Wall Street firms paid executives $18.4 billion in bonuses in 2008 for running the country’s financial system into the ground, and President Obama called it “shameful.” Here’s something you won’t often hear me say: He’s right.

Now, in America, everyone should be free to get rich. I want you to be rich, and I don’t want the government taking your money away to “spread the wealth around.” Bill Gates is the ultimate American success story, and he is not generally begrudged his wealth – he created it, with imagination, determination and a little luck. We all want to be like him.

And the government should not tell private companies how much to pay their executives, or what to do with their money (unless, of course, it’s money that came from us, the taxpayers.)

But last year’s bonuses were the fifth most-lavish in history, according to the Los Angeles Times, in one of the worst financial years ever. Some of those bonuses were undoubtedly paid to people who worked in companies that made money, and they deserve it.

If I find out who they are, though, I will buy stock in that company.

We mortgaged our grandchildren last year to bail out the financial industry. My little granddaughter, playing in her crib, is in debt up to her ears. She will be working, decades from now, to pay taxes to try to retire the debt created by the financial system bailout.

I wonder how I’m going to explain it to her.

In 1989, Joseph Hazelton, captain of the ill-fated Exxon Valdez, ran his ship into the ground and created a disaster. He did not receive a bonus.