On Wall Street, nothing quite equals success like enormous, obvious failure.

Par example, witness the resurrection of detested Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, a man who held Bank of America hostage in its forced acquisition of his company — so that he could pay out $5.8 billion (that’s with a “b”) in bonuses to the people who’d led it to failure. His latest coup? He’s going to lead CIT Group, which has the distinction of being “the first company in which the government realized a loss under its $700 billion federal bailout program.” My kids ran their lemonade stand better than anything Thain has done lately, and for less money, although his new pay package is a mere $500,000 a year, plus $5.5 million in stock. But then, my kids’ business actually made money.

Read more here and feel your blood boil all over again. And remember:  One way or another, you and I are paying for all of it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 9:19 am and is filed under Politics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.