Do Wall Street Executives Owe The Public Anything?

On the verge of collapse from gross mismanagement and from criminal deception by keeping multi-billion dollar liabilities undisclosed to government regulators and their shareholders, giant Wall Street firms such as AIG, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and J.P Morgan had the nerve to demand massive government bailouts.

Because each of these firms are big campaign contributors, the government quickly declared them "too big to fail" and despite the public outrage, bailed them out. No executive was ever charged criminally or held accountable in any way.

But these bailouts were in the trillions of dollars and the taxpayers couldn't afford them which forced the government to borrow stunning sums of money to cover the difference, putting the U.S. deeply in debt. And when even that wasn't enough, the government printed more money out of thin air.

Then it turned out during this financial crisis they helped cause, the executives of many of these failed firms continued to pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses at taxpayer expense. Once again, the public was outraged. To calm the public, in February of 2009, President Obama promised tough action and appointed Kenneth Feinberg "pay czar" to stop these executives from grabbing this money and to try to reclaim at least some of what they had already taken.

Mr. Feinberg talked tough. However, last week he issued a four page report calling their multi-million dollar bonuses "ill advised," a very mild term. He stated he will take no action to try to recover any or all of their ill-gotten bonuses. We are speaking of $1.6 billion in executive bonuses among 17 firms, or nearly $100 million per firm.

This completes Mr. Feinberg's work as "pay czar." He will soon start his new job of overseeing the British Petroleum victim compensation fund from their Gulf Coast oil rig disaster. Given his track record as "pay czar," this does not bode well for BP's victims. But Mr. Feinberg is not the problem, the corrupt political system is. It is a system bought and paid for by corporate campaign contributors.

If the situation is this bad, does it mean it's hopeless? Not at all. But you have to get involved and together we must change the political system. It won't correct itself for as we've seen, it works well for those who control it.

What is the answer? Public funded elections. Brief elections - 30 days, no television time except candidate debates and public funding to include 3rd and 4th political parties to break the two party monopoly. No corporate or individual (rich) candidate contributions. This is how we can take our political system back.

If the situation seems impossible to you, consider that in the 1970's, the American people demanded an end to the Vietnam War, and at first the government ignored them. But the people persisted and brought that war to an end. Today, we have another major fight on our hands, this one to regain our democracy and to restore our nation's fiscal sanity. Those in control won't relinquish their control without a fight. You and I must be up for that fight for nobody can fight it for us and there is too much at stake.

Dick