One Year into the Financial Maelstrom.

There is an interesting long blog article entitled Öne Year after the Financial Maelstrom" by a Canadian leftist journalist, and academic James Laxer. Here is just a snippet noting the huge salaries of chief CEO's of some of the big financial companies that were bailed out. Of course on top of this were the millions in bonuses given to employees often the same employees who were peddling the risky investments that helped cause the crash:

""On February 4, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that at all firms receiving significant funds from Washington, executive compensation would be capped at $500,000 a year. To put this sum in perspective, Obama's annual salary as President of the United States is $400,000. But to top Wall Street CEOs, half a million dollars a year is chump change. In 2007, the top guns at Wall Street Firms were compensated at a much more stratospheric level. John ThainJohn Thain of Merrill Lynch took home $83 million; Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, $54 million; Kenneth Chenault of American Express, $51.7 million; and John Mack of Morgan Stanley, $41.7 million.

To the average American, half a million dollars sounded like a great deal of money. To those used to the lives lived by top corporate executives it was a meager ration. ""