Bank Chiefs Enjoy Double-Digit Pay Rises

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 Top U.S. and European bankers, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, have enjoyed double-digit annual pay rises averaging almost 12 percent, despite widespread falls in profits and share prices, Financial Times research shows.


I don't see any reason why the banksters should suffer. All they did was create a global depression and they didn't see it coming. Their kids need new shoes and a BMW to show off at Harvard or Princeton.




The disclosure will stoke concern on both sides of the Atlantic over chief executive pay levels that has already led to several high-profile investor revolts, including at Citi [C  26.40   -0.70  (-2.58%)   ] and at Barclays [BCS  10.75   -1.58  (-12.81%)   ]. It comes as Europe’s leaders debate a cap on bank bonuses.
Stoke concern? By whom? Not the politicians and certainly not the regulatory agencies so this is just bullshit. Cap on bonuses? How are you going to do that? They own the company, majority of stock and they are doing a heckuva job in their opinion. They deserve it.
The analysis of total pay awarded to 15 bank chiefs by Equilar, a U.S. pay research group, shows they received an average 11.9 percent pay rise last year to $12.8 million, the second increase in a row. However, the pace of growth has slowed.
Slowed? Want to tell me slowed and then that they only got 12.8 million on average? Pass some of what you are smoking over to me. Last time I got a raise it was a boot out the door and no benefits.
Bankers such as Brian Moynihan at Bank of America [BAC  7.67    -0.10  (-1.29%)  ], Citigroup’s Mr Pandit and JPMorgan’s [JPM  35.60    -1.18  (-3.21%)   ] Mr Dimon enjoyed the largest gains.
As they should! They are the Osama Bin Laden's (Al Qaeda) of the financial terrorist network.
Mr Dimon, whose reputation as one of the best managers in banking
has been hit by a $2 billion trading loss in a supposedly safe division of JPMorgan, topped the list for the second year in succession with a $23.1 million pay package that was 11 percent higher. More horseshit and Mammoth this story has more that is in your barn. Didn't they just say he lost 2 billion? So the more they lose the more they get paid. I could have lost a lot less and happily been paid 1 million for my trouble.
The analysis by Equilar adds up base salaries, cash bonuses and certain other benefits. It also includes option and stock awards that were granted in 2011, some of which to reward performance in previous years. 
Sure why not? They lost 2 billion of other people money. I think a private jet goes with the perks and a chauffeured limousine.
It shows that fixed salaries continue to rise while variable cash payments are sinking as regulators clamp down on bonuses. But average stock and option awards increased by 22 percent. 
So much for regulation.

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“Regulators try to prevent banks from taking the outsize risks that led to the financial crisis. But the problem is that shareholders still like outsize returns,” said Albert Laverge, head of the global investment banking practice at Egon Zehnder.
Is he trying to tell me they like outsized losses in the 2 billion range?

Mr Pandit’s pay soared to $14.9 million after the $1 salary of the previous two years was ditched. He had pledged constraint until the bank would return to profitability, which it did in 2010.His pay package, which ranks in the middle of the FT survey, sparked an investor revolt at Citigroup’s annual meeting in April that triggered a wider shareholder uprising against executives’ pay levels in Europe and the U.S.
An example like this just leaves me speechless. Pandit's head should be hanging from a pole on Wall Street. Want to read more of this infuriating garbage? Follow the link is below. It leads to the yellow brick road and OZ. Now click your heals three times and say "there's no place like home."http://www.cnbc.com/id/47942126

Health Care For Poor Challenges Republican States After Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul forces Republicans in states that opposed the measure to make a difficult choice.Enlarge imageRemote Area Medical (RAM) volunteer dentists during a free clinic held at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in California. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIf the states go along with an expansion of the Medicaid program, they get federal money that covers the bulk of the costs. In doing so, they would also have to embrace a portion of a law that they rejected as unconstitutional or too costly.The law was designed to open the state-run program to an estimated 17 million low-income Americans by forcing states to loosen income limits for those who can qualify. The court modified the measure by saying the federal government can’t threaten to withhold existing money from states that don’t fully comply with the Medicaid expansion.“There’s probably a small group, at least initially, who won’t do it,” said Ray Scheppach, the former executive director of the National Governors Association who is now a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “It’s part political. It’s part fiscal. There’s pressure on them both ways.”Republicans won control of the majority of states in the 2010 elections, when concern about the expanded role of government under Obama boosted turnout among the party’s voters. Republican state leaders have opposed Obama’s 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and today criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the core of the law, which requires individuals to obtain health insurance.

‘Unaffordable’ Expansion

Republican leaders of states that challenged the health- care law in court -- including Texas, Florida and Virginia -- say they’re not sure they’re going to opt in.Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican, called a Medicaid expansion “massive” and “unaffordable.”“We will have a choice on Medicaid, which is good,” Bondi told reporters outside the state Capitol in Tallahassee. “We do have to decide what to do and we have to do it very quickly.”Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs said the state is analyzing the ruling to decide how to proceed.“I’m pleased that it gives states more ability to push back against a forced expansion of Medicaid,” he said in a statement.Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, told reporters in Richmond that he is considering the ruling and hasn’t made any decisions. He said the expansion of Medicaid, which now consumes about one- fifth of the state budget, will cost the state an added $2.2 billion over the next decade.

General Fund

“That’s going to be a vast expansion in the amount of money going from the general fund,” he said.The Medicaid expansion would cost states $21 billion through 2019, according to the Kasiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, a non-profit group that researches health care. The federal government would contribute $444 billion, the report said.The Medicaid program has put added financial pressure on states after the longest recession since the Great Depression as more residents were thrown out of work. As tax revenuetumbled, states were forced to close more than $500 billion of budget gaps.The law has drawn support from Democratic state leaders, who celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision.“Democratic governors are committed to following the law of the land and working within their states to meet these goals,” Colm O’Comartun, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said in a statement.

Expanding Medicaid

The law signed by Obama expands Medicaid to cover all Americans earning as much as 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $30,657 for a family of four this year, overruling eligibility rules that now vary by state. The federal government would pay 100 percent of the costs of the expansion until 2017. After that, states’ share of the expansion rises to a maximum of 10 percent of the cost.With pressure in Washington to curb the federal government’s budget deficits, state leaders may decide not to expand Medicaid out of concern that Congress could decide to force them to cover more of the costs, said Marjorie Baldwin, a professor of economics at Arizona State University who tracks health care.“Given the current state of state budgets, we could expect some states would decide they can’t do that,” she said.While some states may decide against expanding Medicaid, most will likely choose to do so given that the bulk of the funding will come from the federal government, said I. Glenn Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School who follows health-care policy.

Political Reasons

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-28/health-care-for-poor-challenges-republican-states-after-ruling.html