What tremendous balls!

Monday’s Wall Street Journal reported that Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was fighting for an additional $10 million bonus for his performance in 2008.

Must have been a pretty good year for Merrill Lynch! Let’s see, total loss of $11.7 billion, stock price lost 73% of its value, narrowly averted bankruptcy and hastily arranged purchase by Bank of America. (Numbers courtesy of Business Week .)

But, argues Thain, things would have been much worse without his leadership. He was, after all, the guy who phoned Bank of America after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Called them that very day in fact…hey, you guys want to buy an investment house?


Merrill Lynch CEO and piece of shit John Thain with Minnie Mouse

By the way, here’s a quick look at Thain’s 2008 compensation as provided by Merrill Lynch in March, 2008. (Numbers provided by CompanyPay.com .)

Salary: $57,692
Bonus: $15,000,000
Restricted Stock Awards: $902,966
All other compensation: $4,449
Option Awards: $1,342,503
Total Compensation: $17,307,610

And Thain has the nerve to argue for another $10 million! Shall I say it again? The company lost $11.7 billion!!!!

And the thing is, this isn’t just another insanely over-compensated CEO with a god-complex whose leadership led to more than $11 billion in losses. Those kinds of assholes are, sadly, a dime-a-dozen. (See here and here .)

What’s really galling about this is that Merrill Lynch has so far accepted $10 billion of US taxpayer money in the banking bailout. (numbers courtesy of CNN .)

And this money grubbing shit-stain, John Thain, is trying to get his filthy, snotty hands on as much of it as he can.

That’s your money my friends. And your kid’s money and your grandkid’s money and this gated-community, private jet, restricted country club asshole is ripping you off.

Want to get angrier? Bank of America has accepted 15 billion of our dollars in the bailout. And since Bank of America is buying out Merrill Lynch, that means that the company that took a grand total of 25 billion of our dollars is considering giving 10 million of them to John Thain!

At what point do we gather the villagers and march to his mansion with torches and pitchforks, rend him limb from limb and burn his riding stables to the fucking ground?

This morning, the furor has died down a bit as the Merrill Lynch compensation committee announced that Thain and other executives will be receiving no bonus “at their request.”

That means that the storm of angry reaction was so severe that they had no choice but to back down. I’d still rather see one of his vacation homes burned to the ground but this will have to do for now.

But make no mistake. This is what these people are about. They will get away with whatever they can. They will fuck you, me and the generations that follow us without even thinking twice if it means another piece of art to hang in the mansion or another Hummer in the 10 car garage.

And we’re just handing over our ATM passwords...

One more note on the auto industry bail-out…

It appears now that the big-3 auto-makers are going to get about $15 billion in loan guarantees and bailout dollars. The three CEO’s have also announced that they will all be taking salaries of $1, a gesture showing their sincerity, integrity and patriotism.

But let me just point out what it means to take a $1 salary. Allow me to re-print John Thain’s compensation package from above:

Salary: $57,692
Bonus: $15,000,000
Restricted Stock Awards: $902,966
All other compensation: $4,449
Option Awards: $1,342,503
Total Compensation: $17,307,610

His salary ($57,692) amounts to just one third of one percent of his total compensation.

So don’t be fooled into thinking that these are stand-up guys who are rolling up their sleeves and brown-bagging lunch until this crisis has ended.

It’s all for show and you’re a sucker and an idiot if you don’t think that these guys aren't getting theirs in the end.

For example, are you aware of the fact that Ford CEO Alan Mulally lives in Seattle? Any idea where Ford is located? Detroit! That's a 2,331 mile commute. Each way!

And Ford provides him with a corporate jet to make that trip.

How do you feel about handing over $15 billion now?

Wake the fuck up everyone! Grab your pitchforks and let’s go! What more do you need to see?