Banks That Got $188 Billion in Bailout Money This Year Paid Out $1.6 Billion to Top Execs Last Year

August 30, 2010 by Prakash Dhawan · Leave a Comment
Filed under: "Money" 

Banks That Got 8 Billion in Bailout Money This Year Paid Out .6 Billion to Top Execs Last Year

The 116 banks that are receiving billions in taxpayer-provided bailout money this year actually paid out .6 billion in compensation and benefits to their top executives last year – even though the results at some of these institutions were so poor that they would soon have to turn to Washington for a government-engineered rescue.

The .6 billion was paid out to nearly 600 executives at the 116 banks that have so far accepted federal money to bolster their financial foundations, The Associated Press concluded after a review of U.S. securities filings. In addition to salary, the compensation included bonuses paid in both cash and stock. The benefits reaped by top executives included the use of company jets for personal purposes, personal chauffeurs, home-security services, country-club memberships and professional-wealth-management services, the news service said.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., a longtime critic of the fat pay packages given to U.S. executives, said the bonuses and perks tallied by The AP review amounted to a bribe paid “to get [CEOs] to do the jobs for which they are well paid in the first place.”

“Most of us sign on to do jobs and we do them best we can,” Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee, told the news service. But “we’re told that some of the most highly paid people in executive positions are different. They need extra money to be motivated!”

The AP review is just the latest in a series of media investigations that have questioned the effectiveness of – and banks’ commitment to – the so-called “Troubled Assets Relief Program” (TARP), part of an overall 0 billion bailout plan that was originally unveiled in late September.

The plan was originally conceived to boost the strength of U.S. financial institutions by having the federal government purchase non-performing mortgages and other bad assets. In November, the Bush administration changed TARP’s objectives, instructing the U.S. Treasury Department to pump tax dollars directly into banks in a bid to prevent wholesale economic collapse.

Ideally, TARP was supposed to jumpstart bank-to-bank and bank-to-consumer lending, helping to unfreeze a credit crisis that may be the worst the U.S. economy has experienced since the Great Depression. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, as a Money Morning investigation

Indian rupee down 20paise dollar strog 46.73

December 14, 2009 by Prakash Dhawan · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized 

Forex Trading House1Indian rupees today depreciated by 20 paise to 46.73 against the US dollar in opening trade largely on fears of fresh capital outflows by foreign funds amid a bearish trend in other Asian markets.
However, dollar’s losses against some currencies, limited the fall in the local unit.

At the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the domestic unit traded 20 paise down at 46.73 a dollar. The rupee had ended 11 paise higher at 46.53/54 against the dollar in the previous session on Friday.

Forex dealers said the expectations of fresh capital outflows by foreign funds following a weak Asian market, which was down up to 1.20 per cent in the morning trade today, mainly weighed on the rupee.

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