On Meet the Press, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) slammed Wall Street firms that plan to hand out record pay packages this year — even after taking billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts.
“Obviously when you see these bonuses being paid out it’s a source of outrage in the country, and it should be,” Dodd said. “What are these people thinking about at these companies?”
Dodd continued:
These firms on Wall Street need to understand that what they’re doing by providing these bonuses, particularly when they received so much federal money, is an outrage in the country.
Dodd wasn’t the only one criticizing Wall Street bonuses on the Sunday news shows this morning. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said on This Week that the bonuses “are offensive.”
And on CNN, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel slammed “the titans of the financial industry” for “fighting the very type of regulations and reforms that are necessary to prevent again a crisis like this happening” and said ordinary Americans are rightly frustrated by Wall Street’s apparent return to excess.
“While they’re struggling to make ends meet, Wall Street is back doing what Wall Street did.”
