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A Decade After Sinking the Economy, Five Biggest Banks’ Executives Have Raked in $3.38B

Sept. 12, 2018

A Decade After Sinking the Economy, Five Biggest Banks’ Executives Have Raked in $3.38B

Chiefs of Bailed-Out Banks Are Doing Just Fine While American Workers Continue to Struggle

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ten years ago Wall Street greed and recklessness helped trigger the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and while working-class Americans and their communities continue to struggle, top executives at bailed-out banks are sitting on thrones of cash.

Over the past decade, the eight men who have been CEOs of the five biggest financial corporations in the U.S. — JPMorgan Chase Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs — netted more than $814 million in compensation, according to a new Public Citizen report (PDF.) In total, these company’s 74 top executives received more than $3.38 billion in compensation.

Public Citizen also found these same banks made more than $538 billion in profits since 2008, and that the pay ratio between executives and the average employee at JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup was about 320-to-1.

“It is an obscenity that Wall Street executives have walked away from the 2008 crash with billions while millions of Main Street families still are barely making ends meet,” said Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director and author of the report. “It’s a disgrace that, 10 years after the crash, President Trump and Congress are colluding with banks to keep mandated CEO pay reforms undone, and to tear down the modest Dodd-Frank reforms, instead of building upon them.”

Another recent report by Public Citizen found that the Trump administration has gone soft on corporate violators as total penalties have fallen by double digits over the past three years.

Despite the recklessness of these banks, no corporate executive has received jail time for their role in the crash. A recent report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco estimated that the cost of the crisis to every American amounted to about $70,000. By comparison, the average median income for a U.S. household in 2016 was about $59,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Read Public Citizen’s full report (PDF.)

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