Banker bonuses a stark contrast to Haiti destruction

Waiting for an all-day furnace repair to be completed, I switched back and forth between watching the heartbreaking devastation unfold in Haiti and cold-eyed Wall Street titans making asinine statements on Capitol Hill.

The juxtaposition was almost too much to bear.

Listening to the bankers in their fancy suits take little to no personal responsibility for the near collapse of the financial system was bad enough.

Hearing them defend billions in bonuses while thousands of the poorest of the poor in Haiti were losing their families, friends, homes and pitifully small belongings was absolutely dreadful.

President Barack Obama pledged $100 million to help the 3 million people in Haiti whose lives have been ruined or changed forever by the earthquake. It won't be nearly enough.

We spent billions on bailouts for banks, which still won't loan to people whose livelihoods depend on borrowing just small sums of money. The amount of bonuses in at least one case equals the amount of taxpayer money used to bail out the company.

The aid money we have given for years to the impoverished, struggling country of Haiti always came with strings so that most of it in some way benefited Americans. The bailout money basically was handed out with few strings. When it appeared, Washington would cap the earnings of top bankers, some of the bankers borrowed money to return the bailout so they could keep their astronomical salaries.

And we still don't have tougher financial regulations to prevent the calamity of 2008 from being repeated. The House has acted; the Senate is dilly-dallying.

Clearly frustrated and angry, Obama is seeking a new tax on financial firms to curtail excessive risk-taking and try to get back more of our money. We'll see how that goes — it's up to Congress, which has shied away from regulating the fat cats.

The first day of hearings by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was stunning. Listening to the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., explain risk management, the commission's chairman, Phil Angelides, was near apoplexy.

"It sounds to me a little bit like selling a car with faulty brakes, and then buying an insurance policy on the buyer of those cars," he said.

Angelides also made the point that most of those hurt by the bankers' failure to understand the complexity of their manipulations were not professional risk-taking investors but police officers, teachers and pensioners. He remains skeptical that the bankers are grateful for their rescue.