Goldman Sachs CEO gets biggest Christmas bonus in world history
Goldmine $achs Chairman CEO and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish) just got a $68 million Christmas bonus, the largest ever received by a Wall Street CEO.
In 2006, Blankfein got a $54 million bonus -- a record at that time.
The Federal Reserve-connected Goldman Sachs has profited immensely by betting against the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, while most other big investment banks have taken losses. Most Wall Street employees will still get bonuses, because of the frenetic pace of merger-and-acquisition activity in the first half of 2007. However Morgan Stanley Chairman / CEO John Mack, and Bear Stearns chief James Cayne both claimed they would not take any bonus for 2007.
Goldman Sachs will hand out $16.5 billion in bonuses overall, the largest in history. Sachs top managers will each take home at least $25 million in bonuses.
Sachs can do this because it’s an integral part of the Federal Reserve, which lets it make profitable bets on the direction of the prices of commodities, including oil and natural gas.
Sachs has 26,400 employees around the world. Their average pay this year (regular salary and bonuses) will be $622,000. Most will get a bonus increase of 30 to 50 percent over last year.
Sachs profits this year - after the bonuses - climbed 70 percent to $9.5 billion, up from $5.6 billion last year. Fourth quarter earnings were $3.22, up from $3.15 billion a year ago.
Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson got a $40 million bonus from Sachs last year.
Wall Street's financial workers earned an average of $289,664 last year, about 5 times as much as other employees in New York City.
Wall Street traders, bankers and salesmen get an annual salary of between $100,000 to $200,000, plus a year-end bonus, which can easily be several dozen times their base salary.
Better still, with half the bonus paid in stock, Goldman's employees have made even more money - their share price has jumped 57 percent so far this year.
Meanwhile, other Wall Street firms, stung by the credit crunch, are watching their profits fall. Earnings at Lehman Brothers, for instance, fell 12% in the most recent quarter.
But workers at other firms aren't hurting. Last year, Wall Street bonuses reached a record $23.9 billion, averaging more than $136,000 per employee. This year bonuses will be $38 billion, for an average of $201,500 per worker.
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Other people will get no Christmas bonus…
Iraq has 2.3 million internally displaced people -- five times more than this time last year.
Sixty-five percent (1.5 million) are children. They are by far the fastest growing number of people living in tents and garbage dumps.
Dr. Said Ismail Hakki (picture below) is a physician, and head of the Iraqi Red Crescent group. He said an 18-year-old girl approached him with a baby that was suffering from leukemia. The desperate mother said she'd do "anything" for treatment for her child -- and then offered herself up for sex. Said Ismail Hakki breaks down in tears as he recalls that story. Leukemia is treatable in much of the world, but not in Iraq. The baby died.
"It shook me like hell," Hakki said. "All my life I've been a surgeon. I've seen blood; I've seen death-- but when I see the suffering of those people, it really shakes me."
Hakki says the plight of Iraq's children is at epidemic proportions, with parents abandoning their children "because they're becoming a liability." The parents do it out of sheer desperation. Many leave their children with a single relative who often has about 20 to 30 children to look after -- and never come back.
"Every time I look at those children, I ask myself, 'What crime have they committed?'"
Hakki says Red Crescent has the monumental task of treating and feeding more than 1.6 million children under the age of 12 who have become homeless in their own country.
The Iraqi Red Crescent is the last line of defense for the country's poor, sick and displaced.
Many of the families live in areas without water or electricity, and there are no jobs. "It's a desperate situation," Hakki said. "Children are becoming a liability for both the father and the mother."
An entire generation lacks basic life skills, with no education, no income, and no families.
"The trauma of what's happening to those children is enormous," Hakki said.
The pictures above are from the waiting room at an Iraqi Red Crescent treatment center in Baghdad's Mansour district. People come here desperate to get medical attention for their war-ravaged children.
Hakki says, "There are times I get up in the middle of the night and I say, 'Oh my God, how are we going to solve it? God help me to help those kids!'"
Source (The web link includes heartbreaking videos)
This was not a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, or any natural disaster.
It was 100% caused by greed and selfishness.
...sounds like Mr Blankfein would buddy up with Gordon Gekko if reality merge with fiction.
Interestingly, my sister, a recent graduate at a prominent southwestern university, wants to work for Goldman Sachs. The problem is Goldman Sachs is very tight on picking only the best and brightest who can continue grinding to add to the investment bank corporation's bottom line.
Why do investment bank corporations continue to depend on the farce of the Federal Reserve that still print gazillions of cash out of thin air without physical backing of commodities (gold or silver standard)? Are they in on the scam to exploit the gullibility of the public and use the clients until spit out when they of no use for extracting large margins of profit?
Sooner or later, American economy will crash to usher in the severe recession or depression that make the Great Depression seems like a "walk in the park". Hyperinflation that make the US Dollar fiat currency instantly worthless, good for burning to warm the houses during wintertime.
Steve Forbes said on Fox News that attacking Iran physically will bring down oil per barrel price to $15. This is precisely the delusional thought of neoconservatives and reactionary right-wing investors & speculators on level with Goldman Sachs and hedge fund management companies in predatory capitalism exploiting the world to line their pockets, as Dick Cheney has profited enormously from the double wars & Hurricane Katrina's destruction through Halliburton, etc.
“Why do investment bank corporations continue to depend on the farce of the Federal Reserve that still print gazillions of cash out of thin air without physical backing of commodities (gold or silver standard)? Are they in on the scam to exploit the gullibility of the public and use the clients until spit out when they of no use for extracting large margins of profit?”
QRS and I have been saying all along that Goldman Sachs is definitely in on the scam. No matter what happens, Sachs gets richer, since Sachs is the source of what happens. It is the external side of the Fed. In many ways Sachs and the Fed are one and the same entity.
Yes I know they only take the “best and brightest.” If you get in with Sachs, you must be willing to work nights, weekends and holidays, at least until you get some rank. If you refuse, you’re out.
Next year Goldman Sachs will engineer a mass merger of airline companies, so there are only two or three left. The remaining super-companies will have a gigantic monopoly. Goldman Sachs has already announced plans to do this.
Sachs is the largest petroleum company in the world by far, in terms of holdings. It dwarfs Exxon-Mobil. Sachs is where most U.S. Treasury Secretaries come from.
It is arguably he most powerful firm in the USA.
and they take it in the name of Christmas, total khutsfah.
that one devil's bonus would help many beseiged people, bigtime!!