Obama against Wall Street Executives

In this article from the New York Times, Obama calls the executives of wall street "Irresponsible" and "Shameful." This is due to the millions of dollars executives received in bonuses on top of their huge salaries. This money came from the bail out the government had given these financial institutions to prevent their collapse.

This entire article shows how these financial institutions have NO social corporate responsibility.Obama stated, “We all need to take responsibility, and this includes executives at major financial firms who turned to the American people, hat in hand, when they were in trouble, even as they paid themselves their customary lavish bonuses. As I said last week, that’s the height of irresponsibility. That’s shameful. And that’s exactly the kind of disregard for the costs and consequences of their actions that brought about this crisis: a culture of narrow self-interest and short-term gain at the expense of everything else.” Here Obama states how social corporate responsibility is not important to these firms and it is not part of their culture. This exact issue is what has brought the economy to where it is today.

Obama reacted to this news by including in the new bailout package a cap salary for executives of $500,000 and any bonuses will have to come from the stocks and not cash. This I believe is the best idea, that way the executives can not use tax payers dollars to continue the same habits that cause the big problem in the first place. These executives need to learn that they need to change their way of doing business and first they need to take responsibility for the damage they have already done, and secondly they need to fix and restructure their entire organization.


LINK: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/obama-announces-new-rules-on-executive-compensation/?scp=4&sq=corporate%20social%20responsibility&st=cse