How big was your bonus?

Yesterday, President Obama was reportedly "irate" after hearing about big bonuses which were paid out to big bank executives last year, calling it "the height of irresponsibility" for employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses while their crumbling financial sector received a bailout from taxpayers. "It is shameful," Obama said from the Oval Office. Now, while I am a free market person, who believes that the bailouts should not have happened and companies (no matter how large) should have been allowed to fail (i.e., reorganize through bankruptcy), I have to agree with the President. The whole idea of a bonus is to reward employees and executives for a successful year by sharing in the profits. Clearly, last year was not a profitable year for most companies, except Exxon Mobil (future blog topic). The banking and financial industry had disastrous years last year both in profits (read losses) and stock performance. So how could they justify a bonus to anyone? Last year the company I work for sent out a memo to all managers stating that there would be no bonuses this year due to our financial performance which was worse than expected. So no one got a bonus, not even the president of the bank. And that's what should have happened at Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Bank of America, and the rest of the big financial institutions that spread the wealth around in a way that President Obama never intended. Let's hope that his administration will curtail such bad behavior in the future. Like he said, "There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses. Now is not that time." Couldn't have said it better myself.