The outrage against the Wall Street bailout is also directed at the high salaried chief executive officers and the middle rung bosses who make multi-million-dollar salaries, with stock options and perks that set them up in a privileged class by themselves.
According to one report, the lowest salary on Wall Street was around 280,000 dollars a year in a country where the average low or middle class employee would go home with a pay packet of 50,000 or 75,000 dollars per year.
In 2007, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, was paid 68.7 million dollars -- described as "the most ever for a Wall Street CEO."
The White House has been called upon to save some of the biggest financial institutions in the country and, at the same time, redress the excesses of Wall Street business tycoons who earned multi-million-dollar salaries and extravagant bonuses. The greed factor in the crisis is that these same tycoons, who are responsible for mismanaging their companies, still insist on continuing with their same lavish lifestyles and lofty salaries even after the massive taxpayer-funded bailout.
[Excerpt of an article by Thalif Deen, Common Dreams]
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