money makes...

Lloyd S. Blankfein, the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs made $20.1 million, of that only $600,000 was salary; and E. Stanley O'Neal, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, received a bonus of $13.5 million and restricted stock worth $11.2 million on top of his $500,000 salary. At the other end of the compensation spectrum, an investment banking analyst right out of college would have made a $65,000 salary and a $35,000 bonus last year. An associate just out of business school might have made $85,000 in salary and a $115,000 bonus.

You can read the entire article here.

So today there was a letter to the editor:

To the Editor:

You report that some Wall Street executives are taking home as much as $13.5 million in bonuses, while the same day you also report that fewer people can afford the rising cost of dental care.

You say federal subsidies for community dental care clinics have been frozen at $34 million for the last four years.

One senior banker, on receiving a $2.8 million bonus, said he bought his wife a mink coat and was planning a weeklong ski vacation.

Meanwhile, we learn that a mental health care worker in Minnesota didn't have $1,000 to save an abscessed tooth.

Something is seriously wrong in this "opportunity society."

Rick Winston
Adamant, Vt., Dec. 28, 2004


I don't understand how someone can dedicate themselves, professionally, to simply making money make more money for the people who already have enough of it.