RNC Chairman Michael Steele Argues that a Million a Year “Is Not a Lot of Money”

Goldman Sachs said Friday that its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, received a stock-based bonus of $9 million in 2009, ending weeks of speculation about how much the New York-based investment bank would dole out amid rising public anger over Wall Street pay.

Regulators accused Bank of America and its former top executives -- chief executive officer Ken Lewis and chief financial officer Joseph Price -- of lying to investors in fall 2008 about mounting losses at Merrill Lynch, the troubled investment bank it was acquiring, and billions of dollars in bonuses paid to employees. Regulators also charged that the bank misled federal officials by falsely claiming it would back out of a deal to buy Merrill Lynch without billions of dollars more in

Last spring, U.S. compensation czar Kenneth R. Feinberg demanded that AIG scale back the size of the bonuses they planned to pay employees. Due to overwhelming public furor, AIG grudgingly hammered out an agreement with its employees to return a total of $45 million by the end of 2009. Never mind that a government audit in late 2009 showed only $19 million had been repaid ... How much was the total bonus pool AIG had promised to pay its Financial Products Unit - the division of AIG at

[Washington Post] This week's retention payments go to those employees at the company's Financial Products division who agreed recently to accept 10 to 20 percent less money than AIG had initially promised them two years ago. In return, they are to receive their payments more than a month ahead of schedule.

The company is still scheduled to pay out tens of millions of dollars more in March, mostly to former employees who did not agree to the concessions.

Government and AIG

REPORTS of politicians who have extramarital affairs while complaining about the death of family values, or who use public funding for private gain despite condemning government waste, have become so common in recent years that they hardly seem surprising anymore. Anecdotally, at least, the connection between power and hypocrisy looks obvious.

Anecdote is not science, though. And, more subtly, even if anecdote is correct, it does not answer the question of whether power tends to

What's stunning to me, and instructive, is the distinction Tom Friedman makes today between what he calls "sustainable values" and "situational values".  I think that distinction is too kind to the bankers. What he means is what human beings used to call - before "values" replaced "virtues" - good and evil.

I have no doubt there are many good men and women working in the banking sector. But the system is so corroded with vice, with selfishness, and, most importantly, with contempt for

Diddy went all out for his son. Not only did he throw Justin a huge, star-studded birthday party at the Manhattan club M2 Ultralounge on Saturday night but he capped the lavish event by presenting his young son with a brand-new Maybach, wrapped in a red bow and parked outside the club.

The party, which was filmed for the MTV reality show "My Super Sweet Sixteen," featured performances by rappers Fabolous, Lil' Kim, and Jim Jones. As if all this weren't enough, cast members from "Jersey

January 21, 2010 – In the most naked abuse of power in a century, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 to open our already corrupt political system to unlimited sums of corporate money in a reckless and highly dangerous piece of conservative judicial activism.

[Bloomberg] A divided U.S. Supreme Court struck down decades-old restrictions on corporate campaign spending, reversing two of its precedents and freeing companies to conduct advertising campaigns that explicitly try to sway