New report details big bank bonuses

The New Bottom Line released a new report entitled Pulling Back the Curtain: Exposing the 1% Behind the 2011 Big Bank Bonuses. The report details how the 1% work together to make sure the country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few.

While the 99% are struggling to make ends meet, to put food on the table and to find good jobs during this financial crisis, the one percent are working together to ensure an even further concentration of wealth. Read the full report to find out how!

Highlights from the report include:

• The nation’s top six banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs — paid out $144 billion in bonuses and compensation for 2011, second only to the record $147 billion they paid out in 2007 at the height of the economic boom.
• Just half of the banks’ bonus and compensation pools would be enough to write down the principals on all underwater mortgages in the country.
• If the six banks took half of their bonus and compensation pool and put it directly into a public service jobs fund, they could create 1.8 million jobs, and still have enough money left over to pay the average employee $60,605.
• Just 72% of the $144 billion in bonuses and compensation at the top six banks would have been enough money to plug the $102.9 billion in budget holes for all 50 states for the current fiscal year.
• The report states that average banker pay at the six biggest banks hit an all-time high in 2011. The average employee at these banks will take home $121,209 for 2011, more than twice the national median household income of $49,445. At pure investment banks such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, average bonuses and compensation in 2011 were double and triple the $121,209 figure.

The report also pulls back the curtain on big bank board members–the very people who decide on executive pay. It exposes how these board members work to put their corporate cronies’ pocketbooks above the public interest.

There is a way to make an economy that works for the 99% though. The report outlines how the top six Wall Street banks could re-prioritize and instead of paying out billions in bonuses to millionaire bankers, start investing back in the 99%. Recommendations included:

• writing down principal on underwater mortgages,
• making fair and sustainable loan modifications to prevent foreclosures,
• increasing lending to small businesses,
• making affordable loans to families, states, and local governments, and
• paying their fair share of taxes.

This report puts facts and figures to what we’ve known to be true all along – the big banks not only aren’t paying their fair share; they’re also directly fueling the wealth and profits of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us. If they were investing that money in our communities, the difference could be measured in tangible results.

Sign our petition urging bank executives to forgo their bonuses this year and put that money back into the communities and the people they’ve bankrupted.