I am not sure how I stumbled onto this documentary - 1992 – 2018 - The U.S. Financial Crisis but it really makes my blood boil. It was a scary event to watch and I think even seriously more frightening to watch the history of it. And the bad players walked away with billions, and never payed the price of bringing down the economy.
Dick Fuld earned about $69.5 million in 2007, the year before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in Sept. 2008. From 2000 to 2007, he was awarded about $889.5 million and cashed out about $529 million of that before the company went bankrupt.
Jimmy Cayne, former CEO of Bear Stearns retired from his CEO position in January 2008 after the company said it lost $1.7 billion in bad home loan bets. From 2000 until his retirement in 2008, he brought home about $376.6 million.
Chuck Prince, former CEO of Citigroup resigned in November 2007 when the company announced it lost as much as $11 billion on subprime mortgage-backed securities. His golden parachute was $28 million, on top of $65.2 million in salary and bonuses since 2000 — a total of $93.2 million.
Stanley O’Neal, former CEO of Merrill Lynch was fired in November 2007 after Merrill Lynch lost $8 billion on mortgage-backed securities, and was given a golden parachute of $161.5 million.
Kenneth Lewis, former CEO of Bank of America retired in September 2009 and got a payout of $83 million in addition to the estimated $138.8 million he took home in cash, bonuses and stock sales between 2000 and 2008 — for a total of $221.8 million.
My question is ... why were these men allowed to walk away with millions while the rest of the world suffered financial loss and the government bailed most of them out? Of course, they had bail out these institutions or the entire system would have collapsed.
A guide to the financial crisis — 10 years later
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