May 26, 2011
I’m writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapse of 2008, and we don’t want it to happen again.
To add insult to injury, many of the billions of our taxpayer dollars that was used to bail out financial institutions supposedly because failure to do so would collapse our financial system, was used instead to pay giant bonuses to the very people on Wall Street who drove us to near-collapse. That bailout money should have had restrictions requiring it to be lent to businesses and consumers instead, and is an example of the need for more regulation of Wall Street
One way to change the incentives so Wall Street doesn’t collapse our economy again would be for regulators to set up a way for shareholders to grab back ill-gotten gains.
If it turns out that the profits in a given year were built on shoddy practices that become clear in the out-years, those bonus payments should be forfeited.
Thank you for considering my comment,
Matthew Emmer
Marina del Rey, CA