Obama Slams Excessive Wall Street Executive Bonuses

President Obama criticized Wall Street Bank executives for having doled out nearly $20 billion in bonuses in 2008 at a time when severe recession has affecting America and the world. Mr. Obama expressed his scorn that the bonuses came at a time when the U.S. taxpayer was providing billions of dollars to keep America's most important financial giants afloat.

The president continued his attack: “That is the height of irresponsibility,... It is shameful. And part of what we’re going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.”

Mr. Obama issued a challenge to Wall Street: "Part of what we are going to need is for folks on Wall Street, who are asking for help, to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility."

President Obama concluded by appealing directly to the American peoples' sense of fair play and honesty by explaining that Wall Street executives had chosen the wrong time to demonstrate greed when he remarked: "The American people understand that we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of,... But they don't like that people are digging a bigger hole even as they are being asked to fill it up."

Mr Obama made his remarks in the Oval Office in the presence of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Vice President Joseph Biden. Mr. Obama angrily declared: “There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,... Now’s not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them.”

The president based his pointed reactions to the dispersal of the executive bonuses on media reports that explained that the size of the bonuses paid out in 2008, were, incredibly, equal in size to the the monies paid out during a much more successful and bullish period back in 2004.

During a later interview on the cable network, CNBC, Vice President Biden pledged that the remaining $350 billion in TARP funds would be distributed by the Obama administration “wisely and prudently and transparently.”

But Mr. Biden followed his reassuring remarks by echoing the president's disdain for Wall Street's top authorities having taken such excessively large bonuses when the country, and the world are facing severe financial disarray and possible ruin.

Mr. Biden saltily declared: “I’d like to throw these guys in the brig,... They’re thinking the same old thing that got us here, greed. They’re thinking, ‘Take care of me.’ ”

In a related development that demonstrated Democratic solidarity against the Wall Street executives' actions; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee "threatened to bring before his committee any Wall Street executives who take big bonuses after their firms are propped up with public money."

Mr. Dodd expressed his displeasure by continuing his remarks: “Whether it was used directly or indirectly, this infuriates the American people and rightly so,... So I say to anyone else who does it, if you do it, I’m going to bring you before the committee.”