If you stayed through to the end of the Will Ferrell comedy 'The Other Guys' you would see the mini-seminar breaking down the financial joke that has been going on around us. Wall Streeters' and CEO's have been fattening their wallets while the rest of us have have been getting poorer in these economic times.
Brought to you in a PowerPoint-like presentation full of real statistics outlining how Wall Street and corporate leaders have fattened wallets at the expense of others. CEO's on avg collect about 300%+ over the average worker. Most people lost their 401K retirement money while CEO's get a retirement package in the high millions.
The movie may be about New York cops who stumble on a scheme cooked up by a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme but these figures are real life nightmares.
The figures cited in the sequence note the following among other great statistics:
- that the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) bailout cost every person in America enough to take a trip around the world
- that after the bailout, some $1.2 billion in taxpayer money went to pay the bonuses of just 73 AIG execs, while Goldman Sachs got a huge tax break that saw its tax rate drop from 34 percent to 1 percent
- that the average CEO earned about eight times the salary of his average employee a century ago, but earns more than 300 times his average employee's wages now
- that the typical American 401(k) retirement account has lost nearly half its value over the last five years
- that New York cops may earn a maximum pension of about $48,000, while the average retiring CEO reaps benefits of about $83.6 million.
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