Does the USA need a perestroika?

[NJ5]

Rath said:
The banker bonuses thing has actually been blown out of proportion. Sure it looks bad and isn't good, but the money given in bonuses is minuscule compared to the amount loaned to the banks.

And yes, there are massive economic repercussions of giving out these massive loans. Personally I'm of the view that it would likely have been much worse if these loans hadn't been given out.

The bonuses are not a minuscule amount of money. Take Goldman Sachs alone:

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/bonuses-put-goldman-in-public-relations-bind/

In the last nine months, the bank set aside about $16.7 billion for compensation — on track to pay each of its 31,700 employees close to $700,000 this year. Top producers are expecting multimillion-dollar paydays.

The latest tally came Thursday, when Goldman reported another set of robust results. But its strong financial showing — a profit of $3.19 billion in the third quarter — was overshadowed by Goldman’s swelling bonus pool. Goldman set aside nearly half of its revenue to reward its employees, a common practice on Wall Street, even in this post-bailout era.

There alone you have several billions in bonuses in a single year, for a single bank.

There's also the fundamental question of allowing bailed out firms which threatened to destroy the economy to be awarded for their behavior.  It all smacks of financial terrorism, and a lot of governments are willing to go along.