Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
I'm relieved to see that both the President and the Vice President are spending their time having beers with (a) a policeman doing his job and (b) the combative professor whom he arrested. That way, the hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money being paid to investment bankers will go unnoticed.
How is anyone supposed to trade against high-speed computers? The market is starting to look like an EKG monitor. Steady trends seem like a distant memory now – – I guess we can count on today being volatile, if nothing else.
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc., one of the
biggest recipients of government bailout money, gave employees $5.33
billion in bonuses for 2008, New York's attorney general said Thursday
in a report detailing the payouts by nine big banks.
The
report from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office focused on 2008
bonuses paid to the initial nine banks that received loans under the
government's Troubled Asset Relief Program last fall. Cuomo has joined
other government officials in criticizing the banks for paying out big
bonuses while accepting taxpayer money.
Citigroup,
which is now one-third owned by the government as a result of the
bailout, gave 738 of its employees bonuses of at least $1 million, even
after it lost $18.7 billion during the year, Cuomo's office said. The
bank's top four recipients received a combined $43.7 million.
Bank
of America, which also received $45 billion in TARP money, paid $3.3
billion in bonuses, with 172 employees receiving at least $1 million
and the top four recipients receiving a combined $64 million. Merrill
Lynch, which Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America acquired during the
credit crisis, paid out $3.6 billion, including a combined $121 million
to four top employees.
Bank of America earned
$2.56 billion in 2008, while Merrill lost $30.48 billion. Cuomo's
office said Merrill Lynch doled out 696 bonuses of at least $1 million
for 2008.
Goldman gave 953
workers bonuses of at least $1 million, with its four most highly
compensated employees receiving a combined total of nearly $46 million.
JPMorgan gave 1,626 employees at least $1 million, and its top four
recipients received a combined $74.8 million. The two banks each gave
more than 200 employees bonuses in excess of $3 million.
