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A comment on Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009). Parent comment

Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by pdpi on Monday February 09, 2015 @08:10AM (#9020949)
Notice that you're effectively saying "the bailed out banks should renege on contracts". If nothing else, there's enough money on the table that the affected people are likely to litigate, and there's a fair chance you'll just end up paying the bonuses just the same, but now topped off with the expenses of a lawsuit.
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by aidos on Monday February 09, 2015 @08:20AM (#9020983)
Are the bonuses often contractual and not discretionary? If so, they're not really bonuses.
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by growse on Monday February 09, 2015 @08:32AM (#9021033)
Contractual doesn't mean guaranteed. You could have a bonus that's contractually tied to a certain set of conditions being met (e.g. personal objectives). If the employee meets those objectives and the company doesn't pay out, they could be in breach, regardless of their financial situation.
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by snowwrestler on Monday February 09, 2015 @09:41AM (#9021330)
They are bonuses, but the word "bonus" means slightly different things in different industries. In the banking industry, think of it more like a sales commission than a totally optional check for doing a really good job. It's paid out according to a pre-determined formula, not the whim of a manager.
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by aidos on Monday February 09, 2015 @10:12AM (#9021500)
Which makes sense. In the cases of financial institutions needing a bailout while simultaneously paying huge bonuses something must be seriously miscalibrated in their calculations.
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by tveita on Monday February 09, 2015 @11:32AM (#9022001)
Jailing the people responsible for committing criminal misconduct and confiscating their gains seems like a nice solution to this dilemma.
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by tgb on Monday February 09, 2015 @08:35AM (#9021044)
Isn't reneging on contracts a standard part of bankruptcy?
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Re:Banks Paid $32.6B in Bonuses Amid U.S. Bailout (2009) by pdpi on Monday February 09, 2015 @08:48AM (#9021093)
The whole purpose of the bailout is that there is no bankruptcy to begin with.
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