I'm glad to see you find this every bit as alarming as I do, Bill. In a way, I would almost expect to get a "free market Libertarian" response that would say instead that these people are entitled to whatever the market cares to pay for their services.

This is really getting into pretty scary territory in my estimation. It isn't too long ago that such activities would have earned headlines and Congressional Investigations and probable indictments. Most certainly, no politician worth his salt would come anywhere NEAR appointing advisors, etc., with such apparent conflicts-of-interest. It would simply have been political suicide.

Now, it's just the common way of doing business. And I think it goes a long way in explaining how we now have record profits on Wall Street in a stunningly successful economic recovery that just so happens to forget that Main Street even exists. God help us all.

You got that right - I have zero confidence in the financial team (though I do like Liz Warren, and Sheila Bair seems OK). And Chris Dodd isn't the only one getting tons of donations that are not appropriate. That problem is endemic; it is reasonably easy to pick out a culprit from almost any flavor of political persuasion.

I'm a bit more critical of the whole banking thing than you. The bonuses are just a byproduct of the banks themselves robbing us blind - of course after a trillion-dollar ripoff there's plenty of money around. And it's not just dirt-cheap capital driving profits, they have also jacked consumer interest rates through the roof and tripled every fee imaginable to squeeze the profits they desire out of the "lower" class. In theory, the dirt cheap capital and bailouts were supposed to be used to drop consumer credit costs (including small business capital investment) and get things moving in the real economy before everyone lost their jobs - but instead the bankers are using it to feather their personal nests.

IMO any payroll tax holiday should be accompanied by something like an 85% tax on executive compensation in excess of $1M. It's only fair considering a huge part of our deficit is a result of the trillions spent to ensure profits in the financial sector. But I'm skeptical of tax cuts as a consumer benefit at this point, the real economy is too battered for that to cut it. I'd prefer to see a solution that also directly benefits people who are now below the poverty line(growing daily).

Bill, is that you, really? GREAT post.

This is the kind of crap I understood was going to change under Obama's leadership. It is stinking filthy, and it HAS to stop. Part of the problem is that people keep reelecting their ethically challenged representatives, and until they stop, we can't make much progress. Morality can't be legislated. Until we get people in office who are willing to do the right thing when no one is looking, we're screwed. Otherwise, every time a new law or regulation is passed (yeah, like that's gunna happen) to keep them honest, they just find a new way to be unethical.

Why is it that police agencies can give prospective hires stress tests to determine if they are being truthful in their application process, but we can't give them to politicians that are writing the laws that the police enforce????? Hmmmmmm.

rec'd